Natures Mysteries

A sliver of four-billion-year-old sea floor has offered a glimpse into the inner workings of an adolescent Earth. The baked and twisted rocks, now part of Greenland, show the earliest evidence of plate tectonics, colossal movements of the planet's outer shell. Until now, researchers were unable to say when the process, which explains how oceans and continents form, began. The unique find, described in the journal Science, shows the movements started soon after the planet formed. "Since the plate tectonic paradigm is the framework in which we interpret all modern-daygeology, it is important to know how far back in time it operated," said Professor Minik Rosing of the University of Copenhagen and one of the authors of the paper.

Sea floor is not normally preserved for more than 200 million years. Professor John Valley, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison described the work as "significant" and "exciting". "If these observations are substantiated it will be a significant line of new evidence indicating that plate tectonics was active and familiar as early as 3.8 million years ago," he said. "That really is an important conclusion." Plate tectonics is a geological theoryused to explain the observed large-scale motions of the Earth's surface. The relatively thin outer shell of the planet is composed of two layers: the lithosphere and the asthenosphere. Ancient pillow lavas are preserved in exquisite detail The lithosphere - made up of the outer crust and the top-most layer of the underlying mantle - is broken up into huge plates; seven major plates and several smaller ones.To view the rest of this article, please visit the source

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A massive island of ice four times the size of Manhatten has broken off from one of Greenland"s two main glaciers.According to professor of ocean science and engineering Andreas Muenchow the ice island is so large that the water contained within it could keep the Delaware or Hudson Rivers flowing for more than two years or keepall the public taps in America flowing for over 120 days.

The new ice island, which broke off on Thursday, will enter a remote place called the Nares Strait, about 620 miles south of the North Pole between Greenland and Canada.

View: Full article | Source: Telegraph

Scientists have discovered massive undersea rivers flowing along the bottom of the world"s oceans.The discovery revealed currents of water 350 times greater than the River Thomas flowing along the bottom of the Black Sea, carving out channels in a similar way to conventional rivers flowing on land. The discovery could help explain how life manages to survive in the deep ocean far out to sea away from the nutrient rich waters that are found close to land, as the rivers carry sediment and nutrients with them.



View: Full article | Source: Telegraph

Researchers believe that plants are capable of remembering and reacting to information contained in light. Plants, scientists say, transmit information about light intensity and quality from leaf to leaf in a very similar way to our own nervous systems.These "electro-chemical signals" are carried by cells that act as "nerves" of the plants.

In their experiment, the scientists showed that light shone on to one leaf caused the whole plant to respond.

View: Full article | Source: BBCNews