Scientists have long anguished over how little is known about Mercury, the innermost of the four terrestrial planetary bodies in our solar system.

The first thing an alien race is likely to hear from Earth is chirps and whistles.

New research suggests that how often Old Faithful and other Yellowstone geysers erupt may depend on annual rainfall patterns.

A mud volcano which has caused millions of dollars worth of damage was caused by the drilling of a gas exploration well, an international team of scientists has concluded.

In the middle of the fourth century AD, a series of earthquakes struck the port of Kourion on the southern coast of Cyprus. The town had no doubt experienced its share of seismic events, but nothing prepared its inhabitants for the major earthquake and tsunami that struck just after dawn, most likely on July 21, AD 365.

When archaeologists excavated the site, among the many discoveries was the heartbreaking tableau of a skeletal family. The man holds his wife protectively while she cradles their one-year-old child. The image, both poignant and instructive, graces the cover of Stanford University Earth Science and geophysics professor Amos Nur's new book, Apocalypse: Earthquakes, Archaeology, and the Wrath of God, written with the assistance of his graduate student Dawn Burgess.

A new model simulation of Atlantic hurricane activity for the last two decades of this century projects fewer hurricanes overall, but a slight increase in intensity for hurricanes that do occur. Hurricanes are also projected to have more intense rainfall, on average, in the future. The findings are reported in a study by scientists at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J.

New observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that the crust and upper mantle of Mars are stiffer and colder than previously thought. The findings suggest any liquid water that might exist below the planet's surface and any possible organisms living in that water, would be located deeper than scientists had suspected.

A new study of possible links between climate and geophysics on Earth and similar planets finds that prolonged heating of the atmosphere can shut down plate tectonics and cause a planet's crust to become locked in place.

I won't have time to post the latest newsletter for the Science Shelf Book Review Archive or mail it to subscribers for a few days, but here's a link.

Read on for a bit more.

The asteroid presumed to have wiped out the dinosaurs struck the Earth with such force that carbon deep in the Earth's crust liquefied, rocketed skyward, and formed tiny airborne beads that blanketed the planet, say scientists from the U.S., U.K., Italy, and New Zealand in this month's Geology.