|
Home > News > Tags > minerals
|
|
30
In a paper published in the January issue of the journal Geology, experts describe the discovery of a mineral that was thought to exist only on the Moon. The rock sample in which the material was discovered is more than a billion years old, and was found in Australia.
Astronauts with NASA's Apollo 11 mission t... |
6 January 2012
06:34 GMT |
 |
|
Newt Gingrich, who is hoping to run for president as a candidate from the Republican Party, proposed on December 10 that America should definitely mine the Moon for precious resources. He was not in agreement with the other person at the table, former front-runner Mitt Romney. While the latter said that he would opp... |
14 December 2011
10:59 GMT |
|
|
Experts analyzing data from the NASA Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity announced on Wednesday, December 7, that the rover recently discovered a vein of minerals on the surface of Mars. The material, which appears to be gypsum, could have only been deposited by water.
The finding represents an extremely impor... |
8 December 2011
02:32 GMT |
|
|
A team of astronomers from the Brown University, in Providence, Rhodes Island, says that the current interpretation of geological data collected from Mars may be wrong. The experts propose that the vast majority of water that once flowed on the surface of the Red Planet can still be found underground.
This new idea ... |
3 November 2011
06:21 GMT |
|
|
The NASA Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity found traces of the mineral jarosite on the surface of the Red Planet some time ago. Since then, investigators at the Syracuse University have been trying to determine how to best use the material in order to determine when liquid water flowed on Mars.
The mineral can also... |
21 October 2011
04:28 GMT |
|
|
Though jewelers can't stand them, impurities that develop in diamonds when the precious stones are formed are a treasure trove for science, because they hold clues as to how the Earth looked like hundreds of millions of years ago. If ancient minerals are trapped within diamond, then they will survive unaltered f... |
22 July 2011
08:41 GMT |
|
|
Peering under a thin layer of iron oxide, or rust, could reveal important carbonate deposits on the surface of Mars, a new study indicates. Finding the mineral could confirm theories that the Red Planet once had liquid water flowing on its surface. Geologists know this from studying water-logged formations here on Ea... |
4 July 2011
04:47 GMT |
|
|
A team of experts claims it manage to discover the oldest signs of biomineralization, the process through which some animals convert minerals into hard structures. All shelled creatures are capable of doing this, and now scientists say they may have found their common ancestor.The microscopic organisms the team found... |
14 June 2011
08:57 GMT |
|
|
Scientists operating the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope announce that they recently discovered large amounts of tiny crystals falling into a growing star. The crystals are in fact the green mineral olivine, which can be found deep in Earth's crust as well.
This phenomenon was observed in large gas clouds that t... |
27 May 2011
01:41 GMT |
|
|
Research carried out in Sweden demonstrates that the belief people have that calcium will reduce their risk of bone fractures later on in life is false. Experts found the same bone fracture risks in people with high and low doses of the mineral in their bones. In the paper, the team also argues that consuming more th... |
25 May 2011
08:43 GMT |
|
|
A team of investigators announces the discovery of a new mineral in an ancient meteorite, which was most likely formed when the solar system was in its earliest days. The new material is very peculiar, and it needs special conditions in order to form. Experts discovered it while analyzing the carbonaceous chondrite c... |
10 May 2011
03:17 GMT |
|
|
While conducting a new investigation on a meteorite discovered decades ago, experts were able to identify that the structure contained a previously-unidentified type of mineral. Analysis has confirmed an extraterrestrial origin for the material.The team was investigating an enstatite chondrite called Yamato 691, whic... |
6 April 2011
03:01 GMT |
|
|
According to the results of a new investigation, the formations long-thought by experts to be fossils of the oldest known microbes to have lived on Earth may in fact be microscopic mineral deposits. Scientists behind the research say that these findings should help inform astrobiologists in avoiding labeling all pecu... |
25 March 2011
04:10 GMT |
|
|
A spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet may have discovered the first clear signs of a former hydrothermal environment on Mars. The mounds that indicated the presence of such a habitat were discovered on the slopes of a volcano, and were determined to be some three billion years old. The reason why this discovery is cri... |
21 March 2011
04:46 GMT |
|
|
Earth's natural satellite is apparently still capable of holding secrets from us even after decades if intensive studies, and a few visits. Researchers say that they have just discovered a new type of rock of the Moon, that can be found on its far-side. The discovery was made as a lunar orbiter surveyed the othe... |
4 November 2010
04:04 GMT |
|
|
Earth scientists are trying to determine our planet's history through a variety of means, but recently they took to doing so by studying diamonds, some of the most expensive and rare rocks in the world.Though, for commercial applications, clear diamonds are priceless, researchers are looking for the exact opposi... |
7 October 2010
15:01 GMT |
|
|
Geologists have known for many years that the dangerous greenhouse gas carbon dioxide can be locked away in deposits of calcium carbonate, but it's only now that they are beginning to investigate ways of actually doing that at a large scale. Calcium carbonate is one of the most abundant chemicals on the face of ... |
30 August 2010
08:23 GMT |
|
|
Many healthcare experts urge their patients to increase their uptake of calcium if they want to have stronger bones. Theoretically, a higher amount of calcium in the organism is better for the health of hard tissues, but only when some conditions are met. That is to say, the mineral needs to be fixed to the bones, an... |
15 March 2010
16:01 GMT |
|
|
Rare-Earth minerals (REM) are chemicals used throughout the high-tech industry today, from making wind turbines and hard drives to creating magnets for speakers and hybrid or electric cars. But the main problem with these compounds is, as the name dictates, that they are very rare. At this point, China is the country... |
9 March 2010
03:18 GMT |
|
|
Stromatolites are stony structures that were produced billions of years ago by microbes. In fact, they are so old that most of them were produced about 1.1 billion years ago. Researchers don't yet know how these cabbage leaf-layered stromatolites were formed, but they are aware that microbial colonies most likel... |
2 March 2010
02:36 GMT |
|
|
Scientists warn that a large number of product containing caffeine, such as tea, chocolate, energy drinks, some sodas, and naturally coffee, can hinder the absorption of vitamin and minerals in the body. In addition, this substance also quickens the time it takes for these necessary chemicals to be excreted from the ... |
22 February 2010
09:39 GMT |
|
|
There are many examples in nature of organisms or animals that are able to construct, steal, or generate a mobile home for themselves that can protect them against predators, or camouflage them. While many species employ various means of achieving this, none is arguably more extreme than those employed by foraminifer... |
14 February 2010
07:04 GMT |
|
|
As more and more scientists are beginning to learn, turning to nature for inspiration rarely fails to yield concrete results in many areas of research. Such is the case with body-armor design, experts say, after they started analyzing the depths of the world's oceans in search of innovation. They have discovered... |
19 January 2010
02:53 GMT |
|
|
Consider the following situation in which an oil tanker capsizes and spills thousands of gallons of crude into the sea. This is the recipe for ecological disaster by any book, and scientists have been working on devising a way of mitigating the effects of such an accident ever since the Exxon Valdez incident. Now, wi... |
18 December 2009
20:01 GMT |
|
|
Stalactites, the beautiful structures that adorn the roof of some caves, appear to be regulated in their growth process by a phenomenon known as “cave breathing.” The discovery, which was only recently made, has serious implications, because it throws doubt on ancient climate models, which partially rely ... |
14 December 2009
04:48 GMT |
|
|
Beneath the planet's surface, there lies a wealth of mineral diversity, with materials featuring elements that are extremely rare to come by and that cannot be found inside the crust. For a very long time, geologists have been puzzled by how these chemicals came to exist on the Earth, when geological records poi... |
19 October 2009
03:57 GMT |
|
|
Banded iron formations (BIF) is the name geologists gave to strikingly banded rock formations that existed around the world and that had been formed between 3.8 and 1.7 billion years ago. Their external appearance and inner composition hint at the history of the planet's climate as it was about two billion years... |
12 October 2009
04:49 GMT |
|
|
In the race towards creating more eco-friendly materials and devices, there are several chemicals that do the job as well as established ones, but with less of a carbon footprint. Such is the case with rare earth metals, which are minerals from which a variety of compounds necessary for constructing hybrid cars and w... |
31 August 2009
15:51 GMT |
|
|
While studying unsuspecting mice and rats, researchers at the University of Iowa (UI) have discovered that the rodents seem to not care about activities that they would have otherwise enjoyed anymore, when they have a low concentration of sodium chloride (salt) in their bodies. This has led the team to believe that a... |
11 March 2009
10:26 GMT |
|
|
A single speck of lunar zirconium is all it took for geologists to pinpoint the exact age of the Moon, after countless controversies between proponents and critics of various lunar formation theories. The small sample was brought back by the Apollo 17 mission all those years ago, but, at the time, the technology to p... |
27 January 2009
13:01 GMT |
|
|
In a series of previous articles, I tackled the "super foods" myth and whether this denomination is actually appropriate for some of today's most hyped fruits and vegetables. So far, we've covered almonds, figs, kiwifruits and asparagus - today, the time has come to add yet another precious name to our gro... |
24 June 2008
04:34 GMT |
|
|
At one point or another in our lives we've all been worried about hair loss - whether it happened while we were brushing and styling our hair in the morning, after we had a shower or simply while we were touching up our makeup in a restaurant's bathroom. Experts say that as part of the natural hair growth c... |
29 May 2008
03:49 GMT |
|
|
NASA and one of its many contractors are planning a future Moon base, an outpost that could be reused by the crews of the next lunar missions to land on the surface in the next decades. This base camp will house astronauts, allowing them to use the moon's natural resources, conduct scientific experiments and ev... |
23 July 2007
09:45 GMT |
|
|
|
|
Find us on Google+
