- Humans Disrupt the Earth's Vibration
Our planet not only orbits the sun and rotates on its axis, but also vibrates like a top as it spins. The wobble has shifted, and now we know why. It's our fault. The planet's spin axis has moved as high as 10.5 meters, and two-thirds of that can be attributed to human-caused global warming since 1899. As glaciers (mostly in Greenland) melted and sea levels rose, sea levels were lighter, continental ice free to rise as well and the planet's mass will be redistributed. In turn, it changes the way the Earth vibrates. Of course, humans are not the only cause of these wild tremors, the movement of the crust into the Earth's mantle is responsible for a third of the change.
- Magnetic Field Keeps Shifting
The Earth's magnetic field doesn't seem to be standing still. The planet's prime meridian continues to shift as magnetic north continues forward, traveling from its former home in the Canadian Arctic to Siberia. Displacement at a rate of about 55 kilometers per year for the last 20 years. Earth's magnetic field is generated by the mysterious movement of the planet's iron core, and for some reason, it has weakened in recent years. As a result, the north magnetic field moves.
- The Earth Forms a Massive Geode
Earth produces geodes, luminous crystalline rocks that are formed when water seeps into hollow rock, so that the water and minerals in the rock react chemically and form crystals within the rock. An example of this is Pulpi, the largest geode in the world, and can only be reached by descending a former mine in Spain. The cold, clear stone spear is made up of gypsum crystals, formed through the chemical reaction between calcium sulfate and water over thousands of years. Geode Pulpi is a crystal in the bowels of the Earth that forms naturally over millions of years. This geode was found in Spain. ((Doc. Hector Garrido) But how did the world's largest geode emerge? This year, scientists discovered that the geological marvel formed at least 60,000 years ago and that the raw material, calcium sulfate, that formed the geode entered the region when the Mediterranean sea flowed approx. 5.5 million years ago The crystals began to form 2 million years ago.
- Diamonds in Diamonds
Earth doesn't just produce lots of gems. Our planet created nesting mineral dolls, called diamonds in diamonds discovered earlier this year at a mine in Yakutia, Russia. But what do these double diamonds look like? It is quite possible that small diamonds formed first and larger ones solidified around them afterward. The first diamond can be coated with a polycrystalline diamond substance, which is not structurally the same, as a fully formed crystal. The outer diamond likely then began to form around it, and then the mantle was squeezed and heated the newly formed gem until the diamond sand dissolved. It leaves a small diamond inside the shell of a larger diamond.
- Undiscovered Minerals
This other diamond, found in South Africa, also reveals a hidden surprise: a never-before-discovered mineral. The dark green mineral was found at a volcanic site known as the Koffiefontein pipe, where dark igneous rock sparkles with hidden diamonds. The discovery was named the mineral goldschmidtite, after the famous geologist Victor Moritz Goldschmidt. But where did this goldschmidtite come from, and what does it reveal about our strange planet? As it turned out, diamonds formed in the Earth's mantle, the middle layer of liquid. What is unusual is the newly discovered mineral composition: The rock is full of niobium and the rare earth elements, lanthanum and cerium. That means something strange has happened to bring these rare elements together, as the outer layer is mostly made up of the more common elements like magnesium and iron.
- Sunsets in Weird Ways
Earth's oddities surfaced in July 2019, when a North Carolina resident took this photo of a beautiful sunset. Even though it looks like a bad Photoshop job, the images are real. The odd split-screen effect is caused by clouds low on the horizon on the left side. The light of the setting sun hits the clouds, which casts shadows and prevents sunlight from reaching the smaller clouds beneath the larger ones. On the right side, there are no clouds blocking the light of the setting sun, hence the more intense hue.
- Continent Under Europe
There is a continent, known as Greater Adria, buried under Europe. The ancient continent broke away from the supercontinent known as Gondwana, which consisted of what is now Africa, Antarctica, South America, Australia and other large landmasses. This year, researchers created the most precise reconstruction of this lost continent, by piecing together ancient stones from Greater Adria that are still scattered throughout modern-day Europe. Even during its heyday, Greater Adria would not have been completely above water, but would have been a series of islands, the researchers said. Adria's demise had begun some 100 million to 120 million years ago, when the now lost continent crashed into Europe and began to dive beneath it. Part of Greater Adria was destroyed in the process, creating the Alps.
- Volcano Erupts Without Warning
Earth can be very unpredictable. That's exactly what happened on December 9, when New Zealand's White Island volcano erupted, killing 17 people. The volcano gave a slight warning by rumbling before the deadly explosion. But why is the eruption so difficult to predict? According to GeoNet, the country's geological hazard monitoring system, the eruption was "impulsive and short-lived. The volcano is vulnerable to such unexpected eruptions because the shallow magma chamber heats the surrounding rock, trapping superheated, pressurized water in the pores. Many small shifts, such as changes in the level of a nearby lake or a minor earthquake, can release pressure on this trapped water, suddenly leading the system into a phreatic eruption, or steam. The steam rapidly expands in volume, destroying rocks rocks and sends wet ash into the air.
- Earth Cracks in Strange Ways
This summer, the biggest earthquake to rock Southern California in decades shattered the land in a strange way. On July 4, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake rocked Ridgecrest, a remote town in the remote Mojave Desert. Just a day later, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake left a crack 11 km long from the place. The quake created tiny, parallel and perpendicular cracks that look a bit like "hanging shoe racks," Susanne Jänecke, a geologist at Utah State University, told Live Science at the time. And how the cracks occur is very unusual. The cracks in the two earthquakes were perpendicular to each other, and until this earthquake, geologists used to think that such perpendicular fractures were rare. The July 4 quake appears to have damaged the fault system in a complicated and messy way, geologists say. Together, the quakes suggest that California's seismic action may be moving away from the better-known San Andreas fault into the deeper eastern California shear zone, experts told Live Science.
- The Mysterious California Fault
In October, a study confirmed that the twin July earthquakes in Southern California had caused something worse. The earthquake was caused by the displacement of the Garlock Fault, a fault that has remained motionless for 500 years. The Garlock Fault is capable of producing a 7.8 earthquake. Even more puzzling, the two earthquakes revealed that faults could be linked in a network to propagate strong earthquakes. Previously, seismologists believed that displacement usually only occurred at one fault and that the maximum possible earthquake magnitude was determined by the length of the fault boundary. The fact that faults can connect makes it much more difficult to predict all possible earthquakes, seismologists say.