PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Fool's gold gives scientists priceless insight into Earth's evolution

Fool's gold is providing scientists with valuable insights into a turning point in the Earth's evolution, which took place billions of years ago

2011-07-25
(Press-News.org) Fool's gold is providing scientists with valuable insights into a turning point in the Earth's evolution, which took place billions of years ago.

Scientists are recreating ancient forms of the mineral pyrite – dubbed fool's gold for its metallic lustre – that reveal details of past geological events.

Detailed analysis of the mineral is giving fresh insight into the Earth before the Great Oxygenation Event, which took place 2.4 billion years ago. This was a time when oxygen released by early forms of bacteria gave rise to new forms of plant and animal life, transforming the Earth's oceans and atmosphere.

Studying the composition of pyrite enables a geological snapshot of events at the time when it was formed. Studying the composition of different forms of iron in fool's gold gives scientists clues as to how conditions such as atmospheric oxygen influenced the processes forming the compound.

The latest research shows that bacteria – which would have been an abundant life form at the time – did not influence the early composition of pyrite. This result, which contrasts with previous thinking, gives scientists a much clearer picture of the process.

More extensively, their discovery enables better understanding of geological conditions at the time, which informs how the oceans and atmosphere evolved.

The research, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and the Edinburgh Collaborative of Subsurface Science and Engineering, was published in Science.

Dr Ian Butler, who led the research, said: "Technology allows us to trace scientific processes that we can't see from examining the mineral composition alone, to understand how compounds were formed. This new information about pyrite gives us a much sharper tool with which to analyse the early evolution of the Earth, telling us more about how our planet was formed."

Dr Romain Guilbaud, investigator on the study, said: "Our discovery enables a better understanding of how information on the Earth's evolution, recorded in ancient minerals, can be interpreted."

### END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Office of Naval Research's TechSolutions program lightens burden for Navy's EOD team

Office of Naval Researchs TechSolutions program lightens burden for Navys EOD team
2011-07-25
ARLINGTON, Va. — Designed to cut the 50 pounds of battery devices hauled by the Navy's explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) teams, the Office of Naval Research's (ONR) TechSolutions Program has developed a lightweight power system, which was delivered July. 22. Responding to a request from the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Training and Evaluation Unit (EODTEU) 2 to create a lightweight power device to charge their specialized equipment, TechSolutions partnered with Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane, Ind., and Protonex Technology Corp. to develop the Power Management Kit (PMK) ...

Deepwater Horizon crude less toxic to bird eggs after weathering at sea

2011-07-25
After collecting weathered crude oil from the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, researchers at The Institute of Environmental and Human Health (TIEHH) at Texas Tech University have reported that only 8 to 9 percent coverage on the shells of fertilized mallard duck eggs resulted in a 50 percent mortality rate. However, scientists also reported the amount of time the oil remained at sea and exposed to weather had a significant effect on its toxicity to the fertilized duck eggs, said Phil Smith, an associate professor at TIEHH. They published their ...

Caltech-led astronomers discover the largest and most distant reservoir of water yet

Caltech-led astronomers discover the largest and most distant reservoir of water yet
2011-07-25
PASADENA, Calif.—Water really is everywhere. Two teams of astronomers, each led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. Looking from a distance of 30 billion trillion miles away into a quasar—one of the brightest and most violent objects in the cosmos—the researchers have found a mass of water vapor that's at least 140 trillion times that of all the water in the world's oceans combined, and 100,000 times more massive than the sun. Because the quasar is ...

Penn: Nanoplasmonic 'whispering gallery' breaks emission time record in semiconductors

2011-07-25
PHILADELPHIA — Renaissance architects demonstrated their understanding of geometry and physics when they built whispering galleries into their cathedrals. These circular chambers were designed to amplify and direct sound waves so that, when standing in the right spot, a whisper could be heard from across the room. Now, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have applied the same principle on the nanoscale to drastically reduce emission lifetime, a key property of semiconductors, which can lead to the development of new ultrafast photonic devices. The research ...

Earliest watery black hole discovered

2011-07-25
Pasadena, CA— Water really is everywhere. A team of astronomers have found the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe—discovered in the central regions of a distant quasar. Quasars contain massive black holes that are steadily consuming a surrounding disk of gas and dust; as it eats, the quasar spews out huge amounts of energy. The energy from this particular quasar was released some 12 billion years ago, only 1.6 billion years after the Big Bang and long before most of the stars in the disk of our Milky Way galaxy began forming. The research ...

Can feeling too good be bad? Positive emotion in bipolar disorder

2011-07-25
Positive emotions like joy and compassion are good for your mental and physical health, and help foster creativity and friendship. But people with bipolar disorder seem to have too much of a good thing. In a new article to be published in the August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologist June Gruber of Yale University considers how positive emotion may become negative in bipolar disorder. One of the characteristics of bipolar disorder is the extreme periods of positive mood, or mania. ...

Farthest, largest water mass in universe discovered

Farthest, largest water mass in universe discovered
2011-07-25
An international team of astronomers led by the California Institute of Technology and involving the University of Colorado Boulder has discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. The distant quasar is one of the most powerful known objects in the universe and has an energy output of 1,000 trillion suns -- about 65,000 times that of the Milky Way galaxy. The quasar's power comes from matter spiraling into the central supermassive black hole, estimated at some 20 billion times the mass of our sun, said study leader Matt Bradford ...

Shining a light on the elusive 'blackbody' of energy research

Shining a light on the elusive blackbody of energy research
2011-07-25
CHESTNUT HILL, MA (July 22, 2011) – A designer metamaterial has shown it can engineer emitted "blackbody" radiation with an efficiency beyond the natural limits imposed by the material's temperature, a team of researchers led by Boston College physicist Willie Padilla report in the current edition of Physical Review Letters. A "blackbody" object represents a theorized ideal of performance for a material that perfectly absorbs all radiation to strike it and also emits energy based on the material's temperature. According to this blackbody law, the energy absorbed is equal ...

Life scientists use novel technique to produce genetic map for African Americans

2011-07-25
UCLA life scientists and colleagues have produced one of the first high-resolution genetic maps for African American populations. A genetic map reveals the precise locations across the genome where DNA from a person's father and mother have been stitched together through a biological process called "recombination." This process results in new genetic combinations that are then passed on to the person's children. The new map will help disease geneticists working to map genetic diseases in African Americans because it provides a more accurate understanding of recombination ...

Cellular stress can induce yeast to promote prion formation

2011-07-25
It's a chicken and egg question. Where do the infectious protein particles called prions come from? Essentially clumps of misfolded proteins, prions cause neurodegenerative disorders, such as mad cow/Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, in humans and animals. Prions trigger the misfolding and aggregation of their properly folded protein counterparts, but they usually need some kind of "seed" to get started. Biochemists at Emory University School of Medicine have identified a yeast protein called Lsb2 that can promote spontaneous prion formation. This unstable, short-lived protein ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Weak evidence behind how we measure pain in babies

Novel breath test shows promise for diagnosing and monitoring bacterial infections

AI-guided lung ultrasound marks a major breakthrough in tuberculosis diagnosis

Towards hand gesture recognition using a channel-wise cumulative spike train image-driven model

Parasitic infection and treatment linked to cancer-related gene activity in the cervix

Over 3 million children died from AMR-related infections in 2022, major study shows

Study estimates proportion of adolescents living with overweight and obesity in England has increased by 50% between 2008 and 2023

Welcome to the First International Conference on Cyborg and Bionic Systems

Breakthrough study identifies promising biomarker for early sepsis detection in neonates, children, and pregnant women

3-year study of tirzepatide shows that most patients only gain 5% or less from their lowest or ‘nadir’ weight

Tirzepatide can produce clinically meaningful weight loss for at least 3 years in adults with overweight or obesity who don’t have diabetes

Common respiratory condition nearly triples the risk of death in adults, new study finds

New research shows evidence of children’s gender biases reflected in their facial emotional expressions

Crustal brines at an oceanic transform fault

The Journal of Nuclear Medicine Ahead-of-Print Tip Sheet: April 11, 2025

A fluid battery that can take any shape

Light that spirals like a nautilus shell

Transforming doors into gateways to the virtual world: the future of mixed reality!

AACR announces recipients of the 2025 AACR June L. Biedler Prize for Cancer Journalism

Human-AI relationships pose ethical issues, psychologists say

Abortion rates remain relatively stable in Canada, while rates spike in UK, Europe, and US

Hundred-year storm tides will occur every few decades in Bangladesh, scientists report

Kidney function following COVID-19 in children and adolescents

Risk factors for severe disease among children hospitalized with RSV

Watch a live catalytic event in real time

Top medical research expert Mark T. Esser named inaugural head of UVA’s Manning Institute

Protein GSK3β offers new angle on overcoming melanoma drug resistance

Mimickers and associated neoplasms of Castleman disease

Preserving and using the deep sea: scientists call for more knowledge to enable sustainable management

Breaking the cycle: unveiling how childhood trauma fuels parenting and abuse

[Press-News.org] Fool's gold gives scientists priceless insight into Earth's evolution
Fool's gold is providing scientists with valuable insights into a turning point in the Earth's evolution, which took place billions of years ago