On May 12, 2008, at 2:28 p.m., China's Szechwan province changed forever. In the space of 90 seconds, an earthquake equivalent to 1,200 H-bombs pulverized the earth's crust for more than 280 kilometers. Entire cities disappeared and eight million homes were swallowed up. This resulted in 70,000 deaths and 20,000 missing. According to one researcher, this tragedy could have been avoided. "There hasn't been one earthquake in Szechwan province for 300 years. Chinese authorities thought the fault was dead," he says.

Evolution isn't just for living organisms. Scientists have found that the mineral kingdom co-evolved with life, and that up to two thirds of the more than 4,000 known types of minerals on Earth can be directly or indirectly linked to biological activity. The finding could aid scientists in the search for life on other planets.

Intense glacial erosion has not only carved the surface of the highest coastal mountain range on earth, the spectacular St. Elias range in Alaska, but has elicited a structural response from deep within the mountain.

Throughout history, the changing fortunes of human societies in Asia have been linked to variations in the precipitation resulting from seasonal monsoons. Research suggests that variations in monsoon climate over longer time scales also influenced the evolution of the world's highest mountain chain, the Himalaya.

The key to understanding Earth's evolution, including our atmosphere and how volcanoes and earthquakes form, is to look into the lower mantle, a region some 400 to 1,800 miles below the surface. Researchers simulated conditions at these depths and discovered that the concentration of highly oxidized iron in the two major mantle minerals is key to moving heat in that region and affects material movement throughout the planet.

Scientists have shed new light on a 500-million year old mystery. Some 500 million year-old fossils of the Burgess Shale in Canada, discovered over a century ago, still provide one of the most remarkable insights into the dawn of animal life. The beautiful silvery fossils show the true nature of the life of that time, just after the "Cambrian explosion" of animal life. Yet, their existence is a paradox: the fossils have been buried deep in the Earth's crust and heated to over 300°C (~600 °F), before being thrust up by tectonic forces to form a mountainous ridge in the Rockies.

Researchers are embarking upon an extreme adventure, plunging deep into the sea to study hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor. They'll share the experience with 20,000-plus school children through interactive sessions.

If climate disasters are to be averted, atmospheric carbon dioxide must be reduced below the levels that already exist today, according to a new study in Open Atmospheric Science Journal.

During the time it takes you to read this article, something will happen high overhead that until recently many scientists didn't believe in. A magnetic portal will open, linking Earth to the sun 93 million miles away. Tons of high-energy particles may flow through the opening before it closes again, around the time you reach the end of the page.

A quarter-million people were killed when a tsunami inundated Indian Ocean coastlines the day after Christmas in 2004. Now scientists have found evidence that the event was not a first-time occurrence.

Scientists believe the barely observed Aurora Subglacial Basin, which lies in East Antarctica, could represent the weak underbelly of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, the largest remaining body of ice on Earth, holding clues about how Earth's climate changed in the past and how future climate change will affect global sea level.

A new technique using X-rays has enabled scientists to play "detective" and solve the debate about the origins of a three billion-year-old rock fragment.

New research argues in favor of a "sick earth" mechanism for most extinctions, rather than external event like an asteroid strike.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, tropical plant and animal species living in some of the warmest places on Earth may be threatened by global warming, according to ecologists.

Volcanoes function in a far more complex way than previously thought, making future eruptions even harder to predict. Although the Soufrière Hills volcano on the Caribbean island of Montserrat exhibits cycles of eruption and quiet, magma is continuously supplied from deep in the crust but that a valve acts below a shallower magma chamber, releasing lava to the surface periodically.

Miles below us, deep within Earth's crust, life is astir. Organisms there are not the large creatures typically envisioned when thinking of life. Instead, thriving there are microbes, the smallest and oldest form of life on Earth. Researchers are using a novel approach to uncover the source of organic compounds found deep within Earth's crust; in the process, new ideas will be tested about how petroleum forms from deeply buried organic matter.

The connection between geology and the history of the Civil War has fascinated some researchers. Now they take history, military history in particular, a step deeper -- into the geology beneath the soldiers' feet.

New North African climate reconstructions reveal three ‘green Sahara’ episodes during which the present-day Sahara Desert was almost completely covered with extensive grasslands, lakes and ponds over the course of the last 120.000 years. Reconstructing the climate of the past is an important tool for scientists to better understand and predict future climate changes that are the result of the present-day global warming.

Topsoil does not last forever. Records show that topsoil erosion, accelerated by human civilization and conventional agricultural practices, has outpaced long-term soil production. Earth's continents are losing prime agricultural soils even as population growth and increased demand for biofuels claim more from this basic resource.

Some of the world's rarest and most precious metals, including platinum and iridium, could owe their presence in the Earth's crust to iron and stony-iron meteorites, fragments of a large number of asteroids that underwent significant geological processing in the early Solar System.