Though we often think of the Earth as changing slowly, some events are so catastrophic that they change the landscape irrevocably. Some 15,000 years ago, a massive lake covered what Keep reading
Tag: geophysics
The Chicxulub Impact’s Tsunami
66 million years ago an asteroid struck offshore of what is now Chicxulub near the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. The impact and its aftermath are widely credited with a mass Keep reading
Turning the Beach Pink
Lab experiments and numerical simulations can only take us so far; sometimes there’s no substitute for getting out into the field. That’s why a beach in San Diego turned pink Keep reading
Slab Avalanche Physics
Slab avalanches like the one shown here begin after weak, porous layers of snow get buried by fresher, more cohesive snow layers. On a steep slope, the weight of the Keep reading
Vietnam’s Emerald Isles
Vietnam’s Hạ Long Bay is home to more than 1,600 islands, many of them made up of mountainous limestone. The area is famous for its karst features, a type of Keep reading
Landslide-Triggered Tsunamis
After the 2018 Anak Krakatoa eruption, a tsunami that ricocheted through the surrounding waters, killing hundreds on nearby islands. The source of that tsunami was a small landslide. Once the Keep reading
Martian Glaciers
On Earth, glaciers slide on lubricating layers of water, leaving complex landscapes like fjords and drumlins in their wake. Mars — though once home to enormous ice masses — lacks Keep reading
Predicting Alien Ice
Europa is an ocean world trapped beneath an ice shell tens of kilometers thick. To better understand what we might find in those oceans, researchers turn to analogs here on Keep reading
Eroding Grains
When a spacecraft comes in for a landing (or a tag similar to what OSIRIS-REx did), there’s a turbulent jet that points straight into a bed of particles. How those Keep reading
When Rivers Jump
Avulsions — sudden changes in the course of a river — are a river’s equivalent of an earthquake, and they can be similarly devastating for those in the river’s path. Keep reading