Our planet’s interior is complex and has many layers. Their formation and structure contain many unsolved mysteries. But new research is providing some clues about how Earth’s internal structure may have evolved. If you were to take a journey to the centre of the Earth you would find most stuff there is made of just three elements, at least until you’re about around 3000 km below the surface. Thes ...[Read More]
Eyeing up the weather on distant super-Earths
At the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan’s (NAOJ) Subaru Telescope has been turning its attention to distant worlds. Latest reports of blue-light observations from the telescope indicate that a super-Earth called Gilese 1214b (GJ 1214 b) appears to have a water-rich atmosphere. GJ 1214 b sits forty light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, nor ...[Read More]
Music of the spheres
I am sitting in a hot lecture theatre in the Università deli Studi, Florence, two days before the start of the proper business of Goldschmidt 2013, a meeting of thousands of geochemists from across the globe. Before discussions of the latest news and views in the geochemical world, a number of pre-conference workshops and short courses are taking place. It’s a chance to get an introduction a ...[Read More]
Spinning a yarn about perovksite
Magnesium silicate perovskite is the most abundant silicate in our planet. Never given a mineral name in its own right, it is unstable at Earth’s surface and has only been observed directly in the lab, rather than the field. So it fails to meet the criteria set down by the masters of mineral names, the International Mineralogical Association. Instead it adopts that given to calcium titanate, ...[Read More]