Category
Curiosities category about geology.
20 facts
Geology
2 min read
More than 2,400 million years ago, the first biological oxygen triggered a colossal rust precipitation that covered the seafloor and formed most of the iron we mine today.
Geology
2 min read
A near-miraculous thermal equilibrium 300 meters underground allowed the development of the planet's largest selenite beams.
Geology
2 min read
In the Great Rift Valley, this Tanzanian colossus defies the laws of volcanism with magma as fluid as water that turns snow-white as it cools.
Geology
2 min read
A colossal time gap where strata spanning more than ten centuries of millions of years vanished on a planetary scale.
Geology
2 min read
A tiny diamond from Brazil showed that hundreds of kilometers deep there is as much water as in all surface oceans combined.
Geology
2 min read
Two billion years ago, an underground deposit in Gabon operated as a nuclear power plant for hundreds of millennia without human intervention.
Geology
2 min read
Microscopic fragments dating back 4,400 million years proved that our planet cooled much earlier than believed.
Geology
2 min read
In southern Iran, colossal salt domes breach the Earth's crust and slide down arid slopes in an unusual display of active diapirism.
Geology
2 min read
How the thermal contraction of magma creates gigantic hexagonal stone prisms
Geology
2 min read
How an avalanche of perfectly calibrated quartz grains can generate a continuous acoustic roar of up to 105 decibels.
Geology
2 min read
Nearly six million years ago, the closure of the Strait of Gibraltar transformed one of the largest marine basins into a salt-covered desert canyon.
Geology
2 min read
For decades, they puzzled scientists by carving long tracks in dry mud; their secret required an unusual synchrony of water, ice, and gentle breeze.