NASA Volcanobot: Geological Robot Explores Kilhauea Fissures

An active lava flow from Kilauea volcano in Hawaii. 

Credit: Reuters

Nasa is planning to explore volcanoes using robots being developed at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has already tested one robot, VolcanoBot 1, at the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii and is now developing a second, lighter and smaller robot, to find out how volcanoes erupt.

Carolyn Parcheta, from Nasa's JPL, and robotics researcher Aaron Parness are developing bots that can delve into crevices humans never could in order to gain a new insight into volcanoes.

"We don't know exactly how volcanoes erupt. We have models but they are all very, very simplified. This project aims to help make those models more realistic," Parcheta explained.

Two robots designed to explore volcanoes are pictured here. VolcanoBot 1 (right) has a length of 12 inches (30 centimeters) and 6.7-inch (17-centimeter) wheels. 

VolcanoBot 2 (left) is smaller, as it is 10 inches (25 centimeters) long and has 5 inch (12 centimeter) wheels.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

VolcanoBot 1 was 30cm long and 17cm wide. It was rolled down into a fissure (a crack that erupts magma) in the active Kilauea volcano in Hawaii in May last year.

VolcanoBot 1 explored the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii in May 2014. 

The robot is enabling researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to put together a 3-D map of the fissure.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The robot set about mapping the pathways of the magma, descending to depths of 25m to two locations.

VolcanoBot 1 allowed the researchers to develop a 3D map of the fissure, confirming that bulges in the rock wall seen at the surface are present deep underground as well.

"To eventually understand how to predict eruptions and conduct hazard assessments, we need to understand how the magma is coming out of the ground. This is the first time we have been able to measure it directly, from the inside, to centimetre-scale accuracy," Parcheta said.

Researchers now want to return to the site with VolcanoBot 2 to delve deeper into the volcano. The latest version of the robot has stronger motors and electrical communications, so more data can be returned. As well as being smaller and lighter, it can tip up and down and turn to look at features around it.

Carolyn Parcheta working with VolcanoBot 1 in Hawaii in May 2014

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

"It has better mobility, stronger motors and smaller (5 inch, or 12 centimeter) wheels than the VolcanoBot 1. We've decreased the amount of cords that come up to the surface when it's in a volcano," Parcheta said.

VolcanoBot 2will be tested in March 2015, Nasa said.

The researchers say their findings have implications for studying volcanoes on other planets and moons, including Mars, Mercury, Enceladus and Europa.

Parness said: "In the last few years, NASA spacecraft have sent back incredible pictures of caves, fissures and what look like volcanic vents on Mars and the moon. We don't have the technology yet to explore them, but they are so tantalising!

"Working with Carolyn, we're trying to bridge that gap using volcanoes here on Earth for practice. We're learning about how volcanoes erupt here on Earth, too, and that has a lot of benefits in its own right."

Where have all the impact craters gone?

Ouarkziz Impact Crater. Credit: NASA

Impact craters reveal one of the most spectacular geologic process known to man.

During the past 3.5 billion years, it is estimated that more than 80 bodies, larger than the dinosaur-killing asteroid that struck the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, have bombarded Earth.

However, tectonic processes, weathering, and burial quickly obscure or destroy craters.

For example, if Earth weren't so dynamic, its surface would be heavily cratered like the Moon or Mercury.

Work by B.C. Johnson and T.J. Bowling of Purdue University, predicts that only about four of the craters produced by these impacts could persist until today, and geologists have already found three such craters (larger than 170 km in diameter).

Their study, published online for Geology on 22 May 2014, indicates that craters on Earth cannot be used to understand Earth's bombardment history.

Johnson and Bowling write, however, that layers of molten rock blasted out early in the impact process may act as better records of impacts, even after the active Earth has destroyed the source craters.

The authors suggest that searches for these impact ejecta layers will be more fruitful for determining how many times Earth was hit by big asteroids than searches for large craters.

More information: B.C. Johnson and T.J. Bowling. Where have all the craters gone? "Earth's bombardment history and the expected terrestrial cratering record." Geology, G35754.1, first published on May 22, 2014, DOI: 10.1130/G35754.1

Water on the moon: Historical Evidence

Called the "Genesis Rock," this lunar sample of unbrecciated anorthosite collected during the Apollo 15 mission was thought to be a piece of the moon's primordial crust.

In a paper published online Feb. 17 in Nature Geoscience, a University of Michigan researcher and his colleagues report that traces of water were found in the rock. 

Credit: NASA/Johnson Space Center

Traces of water have been detected within the crystalline structure of mineral samples from the lunar highland upper crust obtained during the Apollo missions, according to a University of Michigan researcher and his colleagues.

The lunar highlands are thought to represent the original crust, crystallized from a magma ocean on a mostly molten early moon.

The new findings indicate that the early moon was wet and that water there was not substantially lost during the moon's formation.

The results seem to contradict the predominant lunar formation theory—that the moon was formed from debris generated during a giant impact between Earth and another planetary body, approximately the size of Mars, according to U-M's Youxue Zhang and his colleagues.

"Because these are some of the oldest rocks from the moon, the water is inferred to have been in the moon when it formed," Zhang said.

"That is somewhat difficult to explain with the current popular moon-formation model, in which the moon formed by collecting the hot ejecta as the result of a super-giant impact of a martian-size body with the proto-Earth.

"Under that model, the hot ejecta should have been degassed almost completely, eliminating all water," Zhang said.

A paper titled "Water in lunar anorthosites and evidence for a wet early moon" was published online Feb. 17 in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The first author is Hejiu Hui, postdoctoral research associate of civil and environmental engineering and earth sciences at the University of Notre Dame.

Hui received his doctorate at U-M under Zhang, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and one of three co-authors of the Nature Geoscience paper.

Over the last five years, spacecraft observations and new lab measurements of Apollo lunar samples have overturned the long-held belief that the moon is bone-dry.  

Search for Near-Earth Objects and Asteroids Going Too Slow

Only a few near-Earth objects would fit NASA's proposed guidelines for a manned mission to an asteroid. CREDIT: Emily Lakdawalla/Ted Stryk

At the current rate that near-Earth asteroids are being detected, it will take astronomers 15 years to identify every one of significant size and even more than 10 times longer to characterize their materials, a new study suggests.

Astronomers should dramatically ramp up the sky surveys, not only to better prepare for threats to Earth but also to exploit asteroids' contents, scientists say.

These asteroids could be mined one day for valuable metals such as platinum and cobalt, yet at the current rate it will take 190 years to characterize their materials, Charlie Beeson, a doctoral candidate in astronomy at Harvard University, told an audience last month at the 221st annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, Calif.

Increasing the breadth of existing sky surveys and using an orbiting mission to search for asteroids could speed up the cosmic hunt, Beeson said.



Like the moon, Earth is pockmarked with craters caused by asteroid impacts, suggesting that such strikes happen frighteningly often, Beeson reported.

For instance, during the Tunguska event in 1908 in Siberia, up to 80 million trees were wiped out in a mostly uninhabited 830-square-mile area (2,150 square kilometers) by an exploding space rock. The meteorite blast packed up to 1,000 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb, Beeson said.

But asteroids aren't just potential threats to Earth's safety, they are also potential sources of rich veins of platinum, cobalt, zinc, antimony and other valuable metals that might one day be harvested by manned missions. They could even be mined for hydrogen and oxygen for space travelers refueling their rockets, Beeson said.

Scientists have estimated that 20,000 asteroids lurk in the solar system, of which only 6,000 have been identified, Beeson said.

NASA MARS Curiosity: Starts Drilling

The percussion drill in the turret of tools at the end of the robotic arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has been positioned in contact with the rock surface in this image from the rover's front Hazard-Avoidance Camera (Hazcam).

The drill was positioned for pre-load testing, and the Hazcam recorded this image during the 170th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars (Jan. 27, 2013).>br />
CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is sizing up a target rock and flexing its robotic arm ahead of its first-ever drilling activity on the Red Planet, which should take place in the coming days.

The 1-ton Curiosity rover pressed down on the rock in four different places with its arm-mounted drill Monday (Jan. 27). These "pre-load" tests should allow mission engineers to see if the amount of force applied matches predictions, researchers said.

The six-wheeled robot won't be ready to start boring into the rock until it completes several additional hardware tests and other checks, which should keep the rover busy through at least the end of this week, they added.

Scientists: Evidence for Speed of Gravity

Scientists have found evidence supporting the hypothesis that gravity travels at the speed of light based on data gleaned from observing Earth tides.

Scientists have been trying to measure the speed of gravity for years through experiments and observations, but few have found valid methods.

By conducting six observations of total and annular solar eclipses, as well as Earth tides, a team headed by Tang Keyun, a researcher with the Institute of Geology and Geophysics under the CAS, found that the Newtonian Earth tide formula includes a factor related to the propagation of gravity.

"Earth tide" refers to a small change in the Earth's surface caused by the gravity of the moon and sun.

Based on the data, the team, with the participation of the China Earthquake Administration (CEA) and the University of the CAS (UCAS), found that gravitational force released from the sun and gravitational force recorded at ground stations on Earth did not travel at the same speed, with the time difference exactly the same as the time it takes for light to travel from the sun to observation stations on Earth.

The scientists admitted that the observation stations are located near oceans, indicating that the influence of ocean tides might have been strong enough to interfere with the results.

Consequently, the team conducted separate observations of Earth tides from two stations in Free Tibet and China's Xinjiang, two inland regions that are far away from all four oceans, as well as took measures to filter out other potential disturbances.

By applying the new data to the propagation equation of gravity, the team found that the speed of gravity is about 0.93 to 1.05 times the speed of light with a relative error of about 5 percent, providing the first set of strong evidence showing that gravity travels at the speed of light.

Their findings have been published online in English by German science and technology publishing group Springer.

Research Shows Buildings can Amplify Tsunami Waves

Scientists have re-created an entire city in miniature to model the way a tsunami crashes onshore, and have found that buildings can exacerbate the oncoming rush of water.

The findings, presented Monday at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, show that even if a city overall tolerates the force of a massive tsunami well, certain buildings and alleyways may concentrate the rushing wave, generating 80 to 100 times the speed of waves without buildings.

"When we think about designing structures or planning for city layouts, understanding the real, detailed tsunami flow through the built environment is very, very important," said study co-author Patrick Lynett, a civil engineer at the University of Southern California.

In the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2011 Japanese tsunami, building engineers routinely noticed that there were often two buildings standing, while one located in the middle behind it was completely washed away.

Lynett and his colleagues wanted to understand why that occurred. Such an understanding is particularly important given studies showing that the West Coast is more vulnerable to tsunamis than previously thought.

To understand how a tsunami affects a coastal city, Lynett and his team created a 1:50 scale replica of the entire town of Seaside, Ore. They then flooded it with a simulated tsunami 7.9 inches (20 centimeters) high and 5 seconds long that mimicked the relative height and duration of a 200-year tsunami, Lynett reported.

As water broke over the tiny buildings, the team noticed that certain hotspots concentrated the effects of the waves. A U-shaped hotel on the coast seemed to focus the impact of the tsunami, Lynett said. "We call it the tsunami-catcher because it really amplifies the speed," he said.

Buildings arranged in a T, with two buildings in front of the wave and another building behind them, also seemed to emphasise the wave's impact.

Overall, some parts of the city experienced 80 to 100 times the maximum speed and momentum that would occur without any buildings in the landscape, Lynett added. In addition to T-shaped building layouts, narrow alleyways could lead to much higher speeds of rushing water.

The findings suggest that engineers designing seaside buildings should use some of the same modeling approaches used to assess wind forces on skyscrapers, Lynett said.

"This is an argument here that, when we're trying to understand the fluid flow through a city, shadowing and concentration of fluid flow through the built environment becomes very important."

Anomalies amongst Geological Features and Dried Up Lakes on Titan

Radar images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft reveal some new curiosities on the surface of Saturn's mysterious moon Titan, including a nearly circular feature that resembles a giant hot cross bun and shorelines of ancient seas.

The results were presented today at the American Astronomical Society's Division of Planetary Sciences conference in Reno, Nev.

Steam from baking often causes the top of bread to lift and crack. Scientists think some similar process involving heat may be at play on Titan.

The image showing the bun-like mound was obtained on May 22, 2012, by Cassini's radar instrument.

Scientists have seen similar terrain on Venus, where a dome-shaped region about 20 miles (30 kilometers) across has been seen at the summit of a large volcano called Kunapipi Mons.

They theorise that the Titan cross, which is about 40 miles (70 kilometers) long, is also the result of fractures caused by uplift from below, possibly the result of rising magma.

"The 'hot cross bun' is a type of feature we have not seen before on Titan, showing that Titan keeps surprising us even after eight years of observations from Cassini," said Rosaly Lopes, a Cassini radar team scientist based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

"The 'bun' may be the result of what is known on Earth as a laccolith, an intrusion formed by magma pushing up from below. The Henry Mountains of Utah are well-known examples of this geologic phenomenon."

Another group of Cassini scientists, led by Ellen Stofan, who is based at Proxemy Research, Rectortown, Va., has been scrutinizing radar images of Titan's southern hemisphere.

Titan is the only place other than Earth that has stable liquid on its surface, though the liquids on Titan are hydrocarbon rather than water. So far, vast seas have only been seen in Titan's northern hemisphere.

A new analysis of Cassini images collected from 2008 to 2011 suggests there were once vast, shallow seas at Titan's south pole as well. Stofan and colleagues have found two good candidates for dry or mostly dry seas.

One of these dry seas appears to be about 300 by 170 miles (475 by 280 kilometers) across, and perhaps a few hundred feet (meters) deep.

Ontario Lacus, the largest current lake in the south, sits inside of the dry shorelines, like a shrunken version of a once-mighty sea.

Huge Iceberg, Twice The Size Of Manhattan, Breaks Off Petermann Glacier In Greenland

An iceberg twice the size of Manhattan has reportedly broken free of one of Greenland's largest glaciers.

Scientists are reporting the separation to be an indication of another dramatic change to the warming island.

According to the Associated Press, scientists had been keeping a close eye on a specific "long crack" near the tip of the northerly Petermann Glacier. Concerns were eventually raised to a higher level on Monday, July 16, after the 46 square mile iceberg completely separated from the glacier.

University of Delaware professor Andreas Muenchow was one of the first researchers to notice the break.

"It's dramatic. It's disturbing . . . we have data for 150 years and we see changes that we have not seen before," Muenchow told AP. "It's one of the manifestations that Greenland is changing very fast."

In a development that does not seem to come off as a coincidence, AP also notes that the same glacier spawned an iceberg twice that size two years ago.

Those paying close attention to the issue suspect global warming to be the reason for the break, but have yet to be able to come up with conclusive evidence.

And while Glaciers do give way to icebergs naturally, scientists are looking at the rapid rate of break-offs from Petermann as unprecedented.

"This is not part of natural variations anymore," NASA glaciologist Eric Rignot, who camped on Petermann 10 years ago, told the AP.

Ohio State University ice scientist Ian Howat has said that "If it continues, and more of the Petermann is lost, the melting would push up sea levels."
The new huge iceberg is likely to follow the path of the one in 2010, which broke apart into smaller icebergs headed north, then west and last year started landing in Newfoundland according to Muenchow.

MARS: Dusty, Acidic Glaciers Could Explain Layered Deposits

A number of recent publications have suggested that the sulfate-bearing ILDs formed by groundwater upwelling, where subsurface water breaches the surface during occasional upwelling events. 

This process has been invoked to explain most of the sulphate-bearing deposits on Mars.

Researchers from the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) and NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) have proposed a new hypothesis to explain a class of enigmatic geologic features on Mars that have puzzled scientists for decades.

The new results, published recently in the journal Geology, suggest that large sedimentary deposits in the Valles Marineris termed Interior Layered Deposits (ILDs) may have formed in a cold, dry ancient Martian climate as the remnants of massive dust-rich glaciers that may have once filled this canyon system.

"Icy weathering might be a major part of the geologic story on Mars," said PSI Research Scientist Joseph Michalski, "The planet has been in a cold, frozen state for a long time. In the distant past, it was also cold, but volcanoes were much more active, periodically pumping huge amounts of sulfur into the atmosphere, which could have ultimately ended up trapped within ice alongside plentiful dust."

Valles Marineris is a 3,000 kilometer-long tectonic trough system on Mars, which reaches depths of approximately eight kilometers (five miles) below the surrounding terrain.

Inside the canyon are vast mounds of layered sediments of enigmatic origins. Since their discovery by the Mariner 9 spacecraft about 40 years ago, the ILD deposits found within the Valles Marineris have escaped explanation.

Their setting within the trough and canyon system has prompted some previous researchers to suggest that the ILDs formed from volcanic processes because the faulting and rifting that formed the canyon could easily lead to thinning of the crust, high heat flow, and ascent of magma.

However, in the late 1990s, the Thermal Emission Spectrometer instrument showed that the deposits contain gray hematite, similar to deposits explored at Meridiani Planum by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity and shortly after, a French team of researchers produced intriguing new results that further complicated the interpretations of ILDs on Mars.

They showed that the deposits contain sulfate minerals - which are typically found in desert playa or shallow sea environments on Earth and are not dominant phases in volcanic terrain.

One big part of the problem is the size of the altered, layered sediments that rise several kilometers from the canyon floor in places.

Proposed ideas have included the suggestion that the canyon once housed a vast system of deep lakes but, the canyon is not topographically constrained on all sides, so it is difficult to imagine how a lake could have existed there without spilling into the low topography to the north.

Seafloor Mountain Expedition Studied Crust's Deepest Layer

A topographical map of the Atlantis Massif, which also shows the location of its Lost City hydrothermal vents.

CREDIT: NOAA.

Scientists recently returned from an expedition to an unusual seafloor mountain, where they conducted what may be the first-ever on-site study of a type of rock that makes up a huge amount of our planet, but is largely out of reach.

Researchers aboard the research vessel JOIDES Resolution sent instruments to the Atlantis Massif, a seamount that lies near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a long volcanic rift bisecting the Atlantic Ocean, where two tectonic plates are being slowly shoved apart and fresh oceanic crust is created.

Seamounts are essentially a mountain that doesn't rise above the ocean's surface.

Unlike most seamounts, which are typically made of volcanic rock, geological forces essentially yanked the Atlantis Massif from the Earth's gabbroic layer — the deepest layer of the Earth's crust, which rests directly on the planet's ever-shifting mantle.

'Gravity is climate' - 10 years of climate research satellites GRACE

The uneven distribution of mass on and within the planet causes, due the resulting variability of gravity, the earth to have an irregular shape, which deviates significantly from sphericity. 

Known as the "Potsdam Gravity Potato, the geoid has achieved global notoriety but this potato shape is equally subject to temporal changes.

For the first time, the melting of glaciers in Greenland could now be measured with high accuracy from space.

Just in time for the tenth anniversary of the twin satellites GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) a sharp image has surface, which also renders the spatial distribution of the glacial melt more precisely.

The Greenland ice shield had to cope with up to 240 gigatons of mass loss between 2002 and 2011. This corresponds to a sea level rise of about 0.7 mm per year.

These statements were made possible by the high-precision measurements of the GRACE mission, whose data records result in a hitherto unequaled accurate picture of the earth's gravity. One of Newton's laws states that the gravity of an object depends directly on its mass.

"When the mass of the Greenland ice sheet changes, so does the gravity there," explains Dr. Frank Flechtner from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences.

"The GRACE gravity field measurements therefore give us information on mass changes, including climate-related ones."

But there's more. The uneven distribution of mass on and within the planet causes, due the resulting variability of gravity, the earth to have an irregular shape, which deviates significantly from sphericity.

Known as the "Potsdam Gravity Potato," the geoid has achieved global notoriety. But this potato shape is equally subject to temporal changes.

During the last Ice Age, a mile-thick ice sheet covered North America and Scandinavia. Since the ice melted, the crust, now liberated from its load, continues to rise to this day.

This causes material flow in the earth's interior, in the mantle, to replenish. With GRACE, this glacial-isostatic adjustment can for the first time be accurately detected globally as a change in the geoid height: the ice ages continue to have an effect, which is especially evident in North America and Scandinavia.

ESA’s blogging astronauts on the road to space - images

Alexander Gerst, ESA astronaut, training for spacewalks. 

Here he is in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at NASA's Sonny Carter Training Facility, near Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. 

Alexander preparing for his mission to the International Space Station in 2014, as a flight engineer for Expeditions 40 and 41.

Alexander Gerst was born in Künzelsau, Germany, in 1976. 

He studied at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, where he received a diploma in geophysics. 

He also studied Earth Science at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, where he was awarded a Master of Science. 

He has been working as a researcher since 2001. In his spare time he enjoys mountaineering, diving, climbing and skydiving.

Credits: NASA

X-rays illuminate the interior of the Moon

This is an image of an artificial moon rock sample, measuring about half a millimeter across, made with an electron microprobe at ambient temperature after the experiment with X-rays. 

The fragmentation of the sample occurred when it was extracted from the small diamond cylinder in which it had been melted under high pressure and temperature. Credit: Nature.

Contrary to Earth, our Moon has no active volcanoes, and the traces of its past volcanic activity date from billions of years ago.

This is surprising, because recent Moonquake data suggest that there is plenty of liquid magma deep within the Moon because part of the rocks residing there are thought to be molten.

Scientists have now identified a likely reason for this peaceful surface life: the hot, molten rock in the Moon's deep interior could be so dense that it is simply too heavy to rise to the surface like a bubble in water.

For their experiments, the scientists produced microscopic copies of moon rock collected by the Apollo missions and melted them at the extremely high pressures and temperatures found inside the Moon.

They then measured their densities with powerful X-rays. The results are published in the Journal Nature Geosciences on 19 February 2012.

The team was led by Mirjam van Kan Parker and Wim van Westrenen from VU University Amsterdam and comprised scientists from the Universities of Paris 6/CNRS, Lyon 1/CNRS, Edinburgh, and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble.

Five decades after the Apollo missions, the formation and geological history of the Moon still hold many secrets. The astronauts not only returned 380 kg of Moon rocks to Earth but also placed many scientific instruments on the lunar surface.

Last year, NASA scientists published a new model for the make-up of the interior of the Moon, using Moonquake data from these Apollo-era seismometers. Renee Weber and her colleagues claim that the deepest parts of the lunar mantle, bordering on the small metallic core, are partially molten, by up to 30 per cent.

In the Earth, such bodies of magma tend to move towards the surface leading to volcanic eruptions. If the deep interior of the Moon contains so much magma, why don't we see spectacular volcanic eruptions at its surface?

Read more of this article here

HiRise Images: Mars rocks indicate relatively recent quakes, volcanism

Images of a martian landscape offer evidence that the Red Planet’s surface not only can shake like the surface of Earth, but has done so relatively recently.

If Marsquakes do indeed take place, said the scientists who analyzed the high-resolution images, our nearest planetary neighbor may still have active volcanism, which could help create conditions for liquid water.

With High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) imagery, the research team  examined boulders along a fault system known as Cerberus Fossae, which cuts across a very young (few million years old) lava surface on Mars.

By analyzing boulders that toppled from a martian cliff, some of which left trails in the coarse-grained soils, and comparing the patterns of dislodged rocks to such patterns caused by quakes on Earth, the scientists determined the rocks fell because of seismic activity.

The martian patterns were not consistent with how boulders would scatter if they were deposited as ice melted, another means by which rocks are dispersed on Mars.

Gerald Roberts, an earthquake geologist with Birkbeck, an institution of the University of London, who led the study, said that the images of Mars included boulders that ranged from two to 20 meters (6.5 to 65 feet) in diameter, which had fallen in avalanches from cliffs.

The size and number of boulders decreased over a radius of 100 kilometers (62 miles) centered at a point along the Cerberus Fossae faults.


“This is consistent with the hypothesis that boulders had been mobilized by ground-shaking, and that the severity of the ground-shaking decreased away from the epicenters of marsquakes,” Roberts said.

The study, by Roberts and his colleagues, will be published Thursday in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets, a publication of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

NASA Lunar Recon Orbiter: Reveals Recent Geological Activity on the Moon

This shows the largest of the newly detected graben found in highlands of the lunar farside.

The broadest graben is about 500 meters (1,640 feet) wide and topography derived from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) stereo images indicates they are almost 20 meters (almost 66 feet) deep. 

(Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University/Smithsonian Institution)

New images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft show the moon's crust is being stretched, forming minute valleys in a few small areas on the lunar surface.

Scientists propose this geologic activity occurred less than 50 million years ago, which is considered recent compared to the moon's age of more than 4.5 billion years.

A team of researchers analyzing high-resolution images obtained by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) show small, narrow trenches typically much longer than they are wide.

This indicates the lunar crust is being pulled apart at these locations.

These linear valleys, known as graben, form when the moon's crust stretches, breaks and drops down along two bounding faults. A handful of these graben systems have been found across the lunar surface.

Read more and watch the NASA Video here

GeoThermal Energy Project: Pouring water into volcano

In May 16, 2008, Newbery Crater project drilling manager Fred Wilson stands near a drilling rig at the Newberry Crater geothermal project as he describes the work near LaPine, Ore. 

Geothermal energy developers plan to pump 24 million gallons of water into the side of the dormant Central Oregon volcano this summer to demonstrate new technology they hope will give a boost to a green energy sector that has yet to live up to its promise. (AP Photo/Don Ryan, File)

They hope the water comes back to the surface fast enough and hot enough to create cheap, clean electricity that isn't dependent on sunny skies or stiff breezes - without shaking the earth and rattling the nerves of nearby residents.

Renewable energy has been held back by cheap natural gas, weak demand for power and waning political concern over global warming. Efforts to use the earth's heat to generate power, known as geothermal energy, have been further hampered by technical problems and worries that tapping it can cause earthquakes.

Even so, the federal government, Google and other investors are interested enough to bet $43 million on the Oregon project. They are helping AltaRock Energy, Inc. of Seattle and Davenport Newberry Holdings LLC of Stamford, Conn., demonstrate whether the next level in geothermal power development can work on the flanks of Newberrry Volcano, located about 20 miles south of Bend, Ore.

"We know the heat is there," said Susan Petty, president of AltaRock. "The big issue is can we circulate enough water through the system to make it economic."

The heat in the earth's crust has been used to generate power for more than a century. Engineers gather hot water or steam that bubbles near the surface and use it to spin a turbine that creates electricity. Most of those areas have been exploited. The new frontier is places with hot rocks, but no cracks in the rocks or water to deliver the steam.

To tap that heat - and grow geothermal energy from a tiny niche into an important source of green energy - engineers are working on a new technology called Enhanced Geothermal Systems.

"To build geothermal in a big way beyond where it is now requires new technology, and that is where EGS comes in," said Steve Hickman, a research geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.

Wells are drilled deep into the rock and water is pumped in, creating tiny fractures in the rock, a process known as hydroshearing.

ESA Mars Express spots Wrinkle Ridges and Grabens in Tempe Terra

Tempe Terra is located at the northeastern edge of the Tharsis volcanic region and forms the transition zone between the southern highlands and the northern lowlands.

This area is characterised by a large variety of tectonic structures and is one of the most geologically diverse on Mars.

These images from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), operated by the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, which were acquired on 17 July 2011, show a large number of interesting geological phenomena.

The effects of different forces can be seen adjacent to one another. These have led to both extension of the Martian crust and crustal compression, which has created 'wrinkle ridges'.

The most striking result of the crustal extension is a linear graben running across the entire image and only broken by misalignment in a few places.

This graben is up to a kilometre wide and is overlaid by a large impact crater some 12 kilometres across and its ejecta; inside the crater, the graben is covered by younger sediments.

The images show a section of the HRSC image strip located at 42 degrees north and 304 degrees east, obtained during orbit 9622 with a resolution of about 18 metres per pixel.

Landscape shaped by water as well as tectonic forces
To the north of the graben, in the right third of the image, the terrain falls away to the lowlands by over 1000 metres. The landscape here is marked by several extensive valley systems.

Upslope, a number of smaller, dendritic valleys partially covered by impact craters can be made out. Many younger craters in the region south of the graben that still have well-preserved contours exhibit lobate, concentric structures in their interior that have been caused by a slow moving plastic material.

These features, referred to by geologists as concentric crater fill, can be found in a number of places on Mars - including Phlegra Montes, the subject of last month's images.

Prominent mesas are visible in the upper left section of the image, to the southwest. They reveal the original terrain level of the Martian southern highlands. Also conspicuous are the clearly structured ejecta of several impact craters. These partially cover the older flow and graben systems and therefore occurred later. Older, large impact craters have been almost completely covered with sediment or filled with ejecta.

Tempe Terra was first described by Greek astronomer Eugenios Antoniadis (1870-1944, later known as Eugene Michel Antoniadi through his work in France).

His observations of the Tempe Terra region with a powerful new telescope at the Paris Observatory in Meudon during the opposition of Mars in 1909 - described in detail in 1930 - disproved the theory circulating among astronomers that the 'canali' observed by Giovanni Schiaparelli in 1877 were artificial canals; Schiaparelli himself had serious doubts about this interpretation.

BAS Fly-through of Antarctica's Gamburtsev 'ghost mountains'

Click on the Image to visit BBC website and activate the Animation.

Scientists think they can now explain the existence of what are perhaps Earth's most extraordinary mountains.

The Gamburtsevs are the size of the European Alps and yet are totally buried beneath the Antarctic ice.

A geophysical survey of the range was conducted in 2008/9. This allowed researchers to assess the mountains' origin.

In this video, Fausto Ferraccioli from the British Antarctic Survey takes us on a virtual fly-through of the Gamburtsevs.

Animation courtesy of the British Antarctic Survey.

Volcanic Destruction: 11 Geological Maps of Volcanoes

It's not always obvious what it is that scientists find beautiful about a graph, microscope slide, soil sample or some other aspect of their work.

It just looks like numbers, blobs or dirt to the rest of us but sometimes a scientific result or product is so visually appealing, anyone would want to hang it on their wall as art.

Geological maps are often in this category. And some of the most beautiful geological maps are of volcanoes.

The colours on geological maps represent different rock units of different ages.

With an active lifespan of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of years, volcanoes produce many layers of ash and flows of lava that will end up as different colours on the map and with the circular shape of many volcanoes and the radiating rock units, the maps can really be striking.

Wired has collected some excellent examples of geological maps of volcanoes from the United States and Japan. You don't have to be a geologist or even a scientist to have trouble picking a favourite.

Check them all out on their website here