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Today, in the middle of the North African desert, hundreds of metres or more above sea level, lie fossilized fish and sea snake remains – a memory of when this area of land was once submerged underwater. Geological evidence like this tells us that the landscape of the African continent has been uplifted significantly over the last 30 million years.…

Scientists have shown how the freezing of a ‘slushy’ ocean of magma may be responsible for the composition of the Moon’s crust. The scientists, from the University of Cambridge and the Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon, have proposed a new model of crystallisation, where crystals remained suspended in liquid magma over hundreds of millions of years …

For the first time, addressing some of humanity's most fundamental questions on the origin and nature of life in the Universe is within the grasp of modern science. With a £10 million grant awarded by the Leverhulme Trust, the University of Cambridge is to establish a new interdisciplinary research centre dedicated to life in the Universe and led b…

A new study shows it’s theoretically possible. The hypothesis could be tested soon with proposed Venus-bound missions.It’s hard to imagine a more inhospitable world than our closest planetary neighbour. With an atmosphere thick with carbon dioxide, and a surface hot enough to melt lead, Venus is a scorched and suffocating wasteland where life as we…

The largest-ever fossil of a giant millipede – as big as a car – has been found on a beach in the north of England.The fossil – the remains of a creature called Arthropleura – dates from the Carboniferous Period, about 326 million years ago, over 100 million years before the Age of Dinosaurs. The fossil reveals that Arthropleura was the largest-kno…

Cambridge University astrochemist and experimental physicist Dr Paul Rimmer of the Department of Earth Sciences has been selected to receive the Stanley L. Miller Early Career Award from the International Society of the Study of the Origin of Life. The award is provided in recognition of his outstanding contributions to origins of life research.“Th…

New Guinea rests on the Pacific Ring of Fire and is therefore highly vulnerable to natural hazards, including earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. One of the most seismically complex areas on Earth, the Island experiences over a hundred earthquakes each year of magnitude five or greater.Although the onset of these hazards is often sudden, …

Earth’s magnetic field — the invisible shield created by dense liquids churning in Earth’s core — plays a key role in making our planet habitable. Without it, we would be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation and our atmosphere would, quite simply, float away into space. But how did Earth get its magnetic field, whilst other planets like Venus a…

11 November 2021 marked the launch of The Cambridge Initiative for Planetary Science and Life in the Universe (IPLU) at Wolfson Hall, Churchill College. The IPLU is an emerging community of researchers investigating life in the Universe, from understanding how it emerged on Earth to examining the processes that could make other planets suitable for…

Madi East, second-year PhD student at Cambridge Earth Sciences,  is on a mission to help coral reefs — which are threatened by human-induced ocean warming — through improving our understanding of how they grow their intricate and varied skeletons.Coral reefs are essential for life on Earth — providing unique ecosystems for scores of organisms and p…

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have developed a new approach for observing mechanochemical reactions — where simple ingredients are ground up to make new chemical compounds and materials that can be used in anything from the pharmaceutical to metallurgical, cement and mineral industries.The study, published in Nature Communications and l…

In 2009 in L’Aquila, a city about 60 miles northeast of Rome, a severe earthquake killed over 300 people and left 60,000 homeless. In 2011 six Italian scientists and a government official were put on trial for manslaughter, with the prosecution alleging they had not properly communicated the risk of such a major earthquake occurring. They were foun…

A climate scientist from Cambridge Earth Sciences will feature in a panel discussion at the Arctic Basecamp — an organization committed to bringing the message of Arctic risk to global leaders —during the COP26 summit in Glasgow. The panel discussion, on ‘Climate Risk and Tipping Points in the Polar Regions’, will take place on 8th November and is …

Cambridge scientists have used downscaled laboratory models to show how sand dunes move through an idealized landscape, revealing the conditions that decide whether they will pass through hurdles in their path – like pipelines or walls – or get stopped in their tracks.The team’s experiment – which featured mock-up obstacles of varying size and shap…

Dorothea Moser, PhD student at the Department of Earth Sciences and British Antarctic Survey, has led an international team of scientists in new research that addresses the impact of melting on ice cores from Antarctica. Ice cores carry valuable information about how our climate has changed in the past; their annual layers trapping bubbles of ancie…