A lawmaker with a degree in geology was named on Wednesday to head the congressional House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources. That would be Jim Gibbons, a Nevada Republican ... Read More

When I was a kid in the mid-1960s, we moved to a house that had a big pile of coal in the cellar. We used it up by burning it ... Read More

For geological careers of all types, a stint in the U.S. Geological Survey is a great thing. U.S. citizens can register with the USGS OARS system and be notified of ... Read More

I didn't think about geology at all today, just the road. I think my favorite road trip of 2004 was the day I spent documenting the creeping segment of the ... Read More

Carl Zimmer, the writer and blogger, presented a lucid essay on Sunday about the deeper truth of the contaminated stem cells story. All of the federally recognized lines of human ... Read More

On this day in 1848, in the Sierra foothills of northern California, James Marshall found flecks of gold in the millrace he was building for John Sutter. The State Parks ... Read More

Every year I present an update on sprite research, and——Yes, I said sprites: lightning-like flashes that reach upward into the ionosphere. They take several forms called red sprites, blue jets, ... Read More

Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History (Viking Books) The "greatest catastrophe" of the book's title is the mass extinction that closed the Permian Period wiping out more ... Read More

The Mars rover Opportunity has boggled me again. As it trundled across a stretch of Meridiani Planum examining some scrap from its discarded heat shield, NASA announced, it spotted the ... Read More

The sad task of updating my deadliest tsunamis list is particularly hard today: The Indonesian authorities gave up on tens of thousands of missing people, shooting the total deaths from ... Read More

I'm talking about the Black stone of the Kaaba, one of several famous stones in this profile. Today marks the beginning of the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that ... Read More

Mount Everest, the world's highest peak, even looks impressive from outer space. This photo was taken from the International Space Station and shows a dramatic plume of windblown snow coming ... Read More

It's an amazing story: back in the Proterozoic, where the African nation of Gabon is today, a natural body of uranium ore reached critical mass and, for the next million ... Read More

With the Huygens probe nearing Titan, this amazing moon of Saturn is ready to take center stage tomorrow. Here's a review of what we know and think we know about ... Read More

A magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge today, part of the Atlantic Ocean's slow and steady widening. The interesting thing is that the event was on one of ... Read More

Commentators from the scientific community have been decrying the absence of a tsunami warning system in the Indian and Atlantic oceans, 40 years after the Pacific's system began. That is ... Read More

If you are a friend of geology, don't miss today's Salon cover story on the fight against evolutionary theory in the school district of Dover, Pennsylvania. "The New Monkey Trial" ... Read More

Greg Cruey, the Asia for Visitors guide at About.com, has a good background piece on the region that suffered so much in last month's quake and tsunami: Understanding Aceh.

The International Commission on Stratigraphy updated the world's official geologic time scale last year, and I've brought the latest names and numbers to you in a series of seven tables. ... Read More

Yes, they're unlikely, but they're worth learning about if you live on the seacoast. Geography Guide Matt Rosenberg has put together the best advice on the subject, and I've given ... Read More

Disaster science is like earthquake science: progress is opportunistic, prodded by large events. The planning after the Sumatra quake and tsunami is ready to jolt into motion. Ready on the ... Read More

Both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have produced compelling articles about the scientists and authorities who were the first to know about the 26 December tsunami. ... Read More