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I was in Newberg and felt it.

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North America’s biggest earthquake struck 50 years ago. Here’s what science has learned about Earth since the 1964 Great Alaskan Earthquake.

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Scientists are scrambling to find a way to slow down or stop global warming. Many are tackling the problem by looking for ways to manage carbon dioxide, also known as CO ₂. Released by the burning of fossil fuels - such as oil, natural gas and coal - this pollutant traps heat near the planet's surface. Some engineers propose injecting CO ₂ underground to keep it out of the atmosphere. Like a global Band-Aid, this could put off hot-planet problems for a while. But new data suggest it also might have a very troubling side effect: earthquakes.

Companies that drill for crude oil sometimes inject CO ₂ underground already. That CO ₂ helps them access buried pools of oil. But a new study has linked more than 100 earthquakes between 2006 and 2011 to CO ₂-injection wells in a Texas oil field. Most quakes were too small to be felt. Some, however, did produce low rumbles.

Cliff Frohlich, a geoscientist at the University of Texas at Austin, worked on the new study. He told Science News that it is "inconceivable that the injection wells weren't contributing to these earthquakes." He and coworker Wei Gan published their findings November 4 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists already knew that injecting fluids into the ground could cause quakes. The new study provides some of the first evidence that gas injections can do this too.

Frohlich says the new study doesn't automatically rule out the idea of burying CO ₂. "This doesn't mean it's hugely dangerous," he says. But he notes that this study, like a lot of science, "raises questions."

One question is whether a well's location affects its risk of triggering earthquakes. In the study, the authors note that nearby oil fields and other locations where CO ₂ had been injected underground have not experienced quakes.

"The really puzzling question is why some places and not others [are affected]," Emily Brodsky told Science News. A seismologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, she did not work on the new study. But she and Frohlich agree that scientists need to conduct more studies to identify which mix of places and engineering practices leads to quakes.

That's a difficult task, though, because oil companies tend to keep details about their drilling practices private. "We're being asked to answer these questions but not always given the data to answer them," Brodsky points out.

Power Words

carbon dioxide A gas produced by all animals when the oxygen they inhale reacts with the carbon-rich foods that they've eaten. This colorless, odorless gas also is released when organic matter (including fossil fuels like oil or gas) is burned. Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping heat in Earth's atmosphere.

crude oil The term geologists use to describe petroleum as it comes out of the ground. Its consistency varies from place to place; it can be thin and pour easily or be thick like peanut butter.

earthquake A sudden and violent shaking of the ground, sometimes causing great destruction.

engineering The field of research that uses math and science to solve practical problems.

fossil fuels Any fuel (such as coal, oil or natural gas) that has developed in the Earth over millions of years from the decayed remains of bacteria, plant or animals.

geoscience Any of a number of sciences, like geology or atmospheric science, concerned with better understanding the planet.

global warming The gradual increase in the overall temperature of Earth's atmosphere due to the greenhouse effect. This effect is caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons and other gases in the air, many of them released by human activity.

seismology The science concerned with earthquakes and related phenomena. People who work in this field are known as seismologists.

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Energy companies triggered quakes, study says

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Scientists are scrambling to find a way to slow down or stop global warming. Many are tackling the problem by looking for ways to manage carbon dioxide, also known as CO 2. Released by the burning of fossil fuels - such as oil, natural gas and coal - this pollutant traps heat near the planet's surface.

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Antarctica A continent mostly covered in ice, which sits in the southernmost part of the world.

ape A group of rather large "Old World" primates that lack a tail. They include the gorilla, chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and gibbons.

Arctic A region that falls within the Arctic Circle. The edge of that circle is defined as the northernmost point at which the sun is visible on the northern winter solstice and the southernmost point at which the midnight sun can be seen on the northern summer solstice.

astronomy The area of science that deals with celestial objects, space and the physical universe. People who work in this field are called astronomers.

atmosphere The envelope of gases surrounding Earth or another planet.

behavior The way a person or other organism acts towards others, or conducts itself.

biology The study of living things. The scientists who study them are known as biologists.

birds Warm-blooded animals with wings that first showed up during the time of the dinosaurs. Birds are jacketed in feathers and produce young from the eggs they deposit in some sort of nest. Most birds fly, but throughout history there have been the occasional species that don't.

blog Short for web log, these Internet posts can take the form of news reports, topical discussions, opinionated rants, diaries or photo galleries.

chemistry The field of science that deals with the composition, structure and properties of substances and how they interact with one another. Chemists use this knowledge to study unfamiliar substances, to reproduce large quantities of useful substances or to design and create new and useful substances. (about compounds) The term is used to refer to the recipe of a compound, the way it's produced or some of its properties.

climate The weather conditions prevailing in an area in general or over a long period.

cloud A mass of airborne water droplets and ice crystals that travel as a plume, usually high in Earth's atmosphere. Their movement is driven by winds.

colleague Someone who works with another; a co-worker or team member.

curator Someone who manages a collection of items, for instance in a museum, library or art gallery. This person's primary job is to design exhibits, organize and acquire collections and do research on the artifacts included in the collection.

data Facts and/or statistics collected together for analysis but not necessarily organized in a way that give them meaning. For digital information (the type stored by computers), those data typically are numbers stored in a binary code, portrayed as strings of zeros and ones.

diamond One of the hardest known substances and rarest gems on Earth. Diamonds form deep within the planet when carbon is compressed under incredibly strong pressure.

dinosaur A term that means terrible lizard. These ancient reptiles lived from about 250 million years ago to roughly 65 million years ago. All descended from egg-laying reptiles known as archosaurs. Their descendants eventually split into two lines. They are distinguished by their hips. The lizard-hipped line became saurichians, such as two-footed theropods like T. rex and the lumbering four-footed Apatosaurus (once known as brontosaurus). A second line of so-called bird-hipped, or ornithischian dinosaurs, led to a widely differing group of animals that included the stegosaurs and duckbilled dinosaurs.

earthquake magnitude A measurement of the intensity of the ground-shaking associated with an earthquake. The scale is logarithmic. So for every 1 point increase in magnitude (such as from 3 to 4), there is a 10 fold increase in ground motion (how far the land shakes back and forth) and a roughly 33-fold increase in the amount of energy released.

ecology A branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings. A scientist who works in this field is called an ecologist.

ecosystem A group of interacting living organisms - including microorganisms, plants and animals - and their physical environment within a particular climate. Examples include tropical reefs, rainforests, alpine meadows and polar tundra.

engineering The field of research that uses math and science to solve practical problems.

evolution (v. to evolve) A process by which species undergo changes over time, usually through genetic variation and natural selection. These changes usually result in a new type of organism better suited for its environment than the earlier type. The newer type is not necessarily more "advanced," just better adapted to the conditions in which it developed.

field An area of study, as in: Her field of research was biology. Also a term to describe a real-world environment in which some research is conducted, such as at sea, in a forest, on a mountaintop or on a city street. It is the opposite of an artificial setting, such as a research laboratory.

fossil Any preserved remains or traces of ancient life. There are many different types of fossils: The bones and other body parts of dinosaurs are called "body fossils." Things like footprints are called "trace fossils." Even specimens of dinosaur poop are fossils. The process of forming fossils is called fossilization.

genetic Having to do with chromosomes, DNA and the genes contained within DNA. The field of science dealing with these biological instructions is known as genetics. People who work in this field are geneticists.

geology The study of Earth's physical structure and substance, its history and the processes that act on it. People who work in this field are known as geologists. Planetary geology is the science of studying the same things about other planets.

glacier A slow-moving river of ice hundreds or thousands of meters deep. Glaciers are found in mountain valleys and also form parts of ice sheets.

graduate student Someone working toward an advanced degree by taking classes and performing research. This work is done after the student has already graduated from college (usually with a four-year degree).

Greenland The world's largest island, Greenland sits between the Arctic Ocean and North Atlantic. Although it is technically apart of North America, just east of Northern Canada, Greenland has been politically more linked to Europe. Indeed, Vikings arrived in Greenland around the 10 th century, and for a time the island was a colony of Denmark. In June 2009, Greenland became an independent nation. Ice covers roughly 80 percent of Greenland. Indeed, the Greenland ice sheet is the world's largest. If its frozen water were to melt, it could raise sea levels around the world by 6 meters (about 20 feet). Although this is the 12 th biggest nation (based on surface area), it averages the fewest people per square kilometer of its surface area.

Homo naledi An extinct human relative of unknown age. The bones of this species were found in a cave in South Africa in 2013 and 2014.

ice sheet A broad blanket of ice, often kilometers deep. Ice sheets currently cover most of Antarctica. An ice sheet also blankets most of Greenland. During the last glaciation, ice sheets also covered much of North America and Europe.

lacrosse A game that uses a stick and ball that was originally developed by Native Americans. Players cradle the ball in the net at the end of their stick, using the stick to move the ball down the field and eventually into the opponent's netted goal area.

lava Molten rock that comes up from the mantle, through Earth's crust, and out of a volcano.

lead A toxic heavy metal (abbreviated as Pb) that in the body moves to where calcium wants to go. The metal is particularly toxic to the brain, where in a child's developing brain it can permanently impair IQ, even at relatively low levels.

locomotion The ability to move from place to place.

native Associated with a particular location; native plants and animals have been found in a particular location since recorded history began. These species also tend to have developed within a region, occurring there naturally (not because they were planted or moved there by people). Most are particularly well adapted to their environment.

naturalist A biologist who works in the field (such as in forests, swamps or tundra) and studies the interconnections between wildlife that make up local ecosystems.

navigate To find one's way through a landscape using visual cues, sensory information (like scents), magnetic information (like an internal compass) or other techniques.

neuroscience The field of science that deals with the structure or function of the brain and other parts of the nervous system. Researchers in this field are known as neuroscientists.

organism Any living thing, from elephants and plants to bacteria and other types of single-celled life.

paleoanthropologist A scientist who studies ancient humans and hominid biology and the behavior and how hominids evolved. This field is based on the analysis of fossils, remnants, artifacts or markings created or used by these individuals.

paleontologist A scientist who specializes in studying fossils, the remains of ancient organisms.

satellite A moon orbiting a planet or a vehicle or other manufactured object that orbits some celestial body in space.

seismology The science concerned with earthquakes and related phenomena. People who work in this field are known as seismologists.

STEM An acronym (abbreviation made using the first letters of a term) for science, technology, engineering and math.

survey (v.) To ask questions that glean data on the opinions, practices (such as dining or sleeping habits), knowledge or skills of a broad range of people. Researchers select the number and types of people questioned in hopes that the answers these individuals give will be representative of others who are their age, belong to the same ethnic group or live in the same region. (n.) The list of questions that will be offered to glean those data.

technology The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry - or the devices, processes and systems that result from those efforts.

theory (in science) A description of some aspect of the natural world based on extensive observations, tests and reason. A theory can also be a way of organizing a broad body of knowledge that applies in a broad range of circumstances to explain what will happen. Unlike the common definition of theory, a theory in science is not just a hunch. Ideas or conclusions that are based on a theory - and not yet on firm data or observations - are referred to as theoretical. Scientists who use mathematics and/or existing data to project what might happen in new situations are known as theorists.

urban Of or related to cities, especially densely populated ones or regions where lots of traffic and industrial activity occurs. The development or buildup of urban areas is a phenomenon known as urbanization.

urban heat island A city or metropolitan area that's much warmer than surrounding rural areas. The increased temperature results from several phenomena. Many hard surfaces, such as buildings and pavements, absorb sunlight and then release that energy - as heat - into the air. Also, human activities such as running air conditioners and driving cars will release large amounts of heat directly into the environment.

weather Conditions in the atmosphere at a localized place and a particular time. It is usually described in terms of particular features, such as air pressure, humidity, moisture, any precipitation (rain, snow or ice), temperature and wind speed. Weather constitutes the actual conditions that occur at any time and place. It's different from climate, which is a description of the conditions that tend to occur in some general region during a particular month or season.

Western Interior Seaway This shallow marine sea, sometimes called the Cretaceous Seaway, split North America into two landmasses: Laramidia to the West and Appalachia to the East.

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Antarctica A continent mostly covered in ice, which sits in the southernmost part of the world. ape A group of rather large "Old World" primates that lack a tail. They include the gorilla, chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and gibbons. Arctic A region that falls within the Arctic Circle.

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Plate tectonics is the process whereby Earth continually rebuilds itself — and causes destructive events like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

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The breakup of an ancient supercontinent may have been an outside job. That's the conclusion of a scientist who reexamined what tectonic plates were doing around 200 million years ago. Those plates carry the landmasses and seafloors as they move across Earth's syrupy, bendable mantle. The scientist concludes that Pangaea - the supercontinent that once held most of Earth's land - appears to have been ripped apart. And the shrinking of the ancestor of the Indian Ocean may have been all it took to do that, he argues in a newly published analysis.

The outer shell of the Earth is covered with more than a dozen tectonic plates. These pieces of the planet's crust slowly grow, shrink and move. Their movement is one reason earthquakes can occur. It also is one reason the planet's continents sit in different locations today than they did in the distant past.

Roughly 300 million years ago, there was no Africa or North America. All of Earth's major landmasses were squashed into one huge supercontinent. Earth scientists refer to this mega-continent as Pangaea (pan-GEE-uh). Some 100 million years later, Pangaea began breaking apart. The Atlantic Ocean started to form between what would become North America and Africa.

Because Earth's size didn't change, the creation of a new ocean had to be balanced by the destruction of crust somewhere else. That occurred at sites known as subduction zones. These sites are where surface rock plunges into Earth's interior and melts again.

Geoscientists have proposed two sites for where the subduction might have taken place when Pangaea began breaking apart. One is the ancestor of the Pacific Ocean. The other is Tethys - a forerunner of the modern Indian Ocean. Tethys crumpled as the early African and Eurasian continents drifted together. To the east, the western edge of North America may have steamrolled over the early Pacific Ocean.

Determining which ancient ocean allowed the Atlantic crust to form poses a challenge because of the planet's shape, says Fraser Keppie. He is an Earth scientist at Nova Scotia's Department of Energy in Halifax, Canada. The problem is that Earth is round. A sort of "conveyer belt" exists between newly forming and sinking sections of Earth's crust. But if you cut up a globe and then lay it out flat, nothing lines up like it should. That makes it difficult to figure out where the conveyor belt starts and ends. Scientists need to see which areas are parallel to each other. But any flat map will distort this.

So Keppie tried another approach. A traditional flat map is anchored at the North and South poles. Keppie instead created a map that is circular and centered on a fixed point near Southern Europe. On that map, he plotted out the movement of the tectonic plates as Pangaea broke apart. Continents rotated around the fixed point like the swinging hands on a clock.

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From this new perspective, the shrinking Tethys and the growing Atlantic both extend outward from the circle's center, parallel to each other. The edge of the early Pacific sits along the circle's edge. That ocean is perpendicular, not parallel, to the other two regions. By looking at this arrangement, the Atlantic's growth clearly seems linked to the Tethys Ocean - not to the early Pacific, Keppie says. He reported his observations online February 27 in Geology.

"When I first saw this, I was really shocked," he says. "It was absolutely apparent that the Atlantic and the Tethys are the compensation system, not the Atlantic and the Pacific."

Keppie proposes that the Tethys Ocean was the driving force behind Pangaea's breakup. Gravity pulled the crust underneath Tethys into a subduction zone. That yanked the crust on Pangaea's Eurasian edge. If strong enough, this tug could have ripped the supercontinent apart between Africa and North America. That was a weak point. It was where two landmasses had stitched themselves together millions of years earlier.

This scenario is different from the currently accepted one for Pangaea's breakup. That one holds that material from Earth's interior sprung up along the boundary between North America and Africa. This would have pushed the two continents apart.

Keppie says that this theory makes less sense than his new one. Why? It relies on a big coincidence. It says the new crust material must have just bubbled up in the perfect spot, along one of Pangaea's seams.

The new work signals that scientists may now have to rethink what led to Pangaea's demise, says Stephen Johnston. He's a geologist at Canada's University of Victoria in British Columbia. "Everything we think we know about Pangaea is up in the air now," he says. Johnston was not involved with the research.

Keppie's work isn't the final word on Pangaea's breakup, Johnston notes. But it does make predictions that geologists can test. Scientists now can look for something like an ancient fault in the Pacific where two tectonic plates scraped together. "The great part about this work is that it's clear, simple and testable," Johnston says. 'We can go out into the field and look at the rocks in light of his model and test it."

Power Words

continent (in geology) The huge land masses that sit upon tectonic plates. In modern times, there are six geologic continents: North America, South America, Eurasia, Africa, Australia and Antarctic.

crust (in geology) Earth's outermost surface, usually made from dense, solid rock.

earthquake A sudden and sometimes violent shaking of the ground, sometimes causing great destruction, as a result of movements within Earth's crust or of volcanic action.

Earth's crust The outermost layer of Earth. It is relatively cold and brittle.

fault In geology, a fracture along which there is movement of part of Earth's lithosphere.

geology The study of Earth's physical structure and substance, its history and the processes that act on it. People who work in this field are known as geologists. Planetary geology is the science of studying the same things about other planets.

geoscience Any of a number of sciences, like geology or atmospheric science, concerned with better understanding the planet.

gravity The force that attracts anything with mass, or bulk, towards any other thing with mass. The more mass that something has, the greater its gravity.

landmass A continent, large island or any other continuous body of land.

Pangaea The supercontinent that existed from about 300 to 200 million years ago and was composed of all of the major continents seen today, squished together.

parallel An adjective that describes two things that are side by side and have the same distance between their parts. Even when extended into infinity, the two lines would never touch. In the word "all," the final two letters are parallel lines.

perpendicular An adjective that describes two things that are situated approximately 90 degrees to each other. In the letter "T," the top line of the letter is perpendicular to the bottom line.

planet A celestial object that orbits a star, is big enough for gravity to have squashed it into a roundish ball and it must have cleared other objects out of the way in its orbital neighborhood. To accomplish the third feat, it must be big enough to pull neighboring objects into the planet itself or to sling-shot them around the planet and off into outer space. Astronomers of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) created this three-part scientific definition of a planet in August 2006 to determine Pluto's status. Based on that definition, IAU ruled that Pluto did not qualify. The solar system now consists of eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

subduct (verb)or subduction (noun) The process by which tectonic plates sink or slide back from Earth's outer layer into its middle layer, called the mantle.

subduction zone A large fault where one tectonic plate sinks beneath another as they collide. Subduction zones usually have a deep trench along the top.

tectonic plates The gigantic slabs - some spanning thousands of kilometers (or miles) across - that make up Earth's outer layer.

Tethys Ocean An ancient sea.

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University of Victoria in British Columbia

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Ancient ocean linked to supercontinent's breakup

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The breakup of an ancient supercontinent may have been an outside job. That's the conclusion of a scientist who reexamined what tectonic plates were doing around 200 million years ago. Those plates carry the landmasses and seafloors as they move across Earth's syrupy, bendable mantle.

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National Aeronautics and Space Administration

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These may be the oldest fossils on Earth

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Some mini mounds in Greenland may just be the earliest evidence of life on Earth, deposited a mere 800,000 years after our planet first formed.

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Repeatedly during its early history, Earth was bombarded by space rocks larger in diameter than the state of Utah. Such collisions likely killed off any emerging life on the planet's surface - probably again and again. The last of these death rocks struck around 4.3 billion years ago. At least that's the estimate that scientists propose in the July 31 Nature. This date offers an upper limit to how long our planet may have continuously sustained life.

Earth appears to be around 4.6 billion years old. For its first 800,000 years, the planet was a hellish place. That's why geologists call this the Hadean eon - after Hades, the Greek god of the underworld. Debris left over from the solar system's creation regularly slammed into Earth. This would have boiled away the early ocean and coated the planet with molten rock.

But scientists think that it was during this chaotic time that life began.

"If life on Earth emerged before [a] final sterilizing impact, it may have been completely erased," says Simone Marchi. That's right: Rendered extinct. "Life would have had to start all over again," concludes this planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. She led the new study.

So much material struck Earth during the Hadean that it would have built up the planet's surface by a height equal to that of Mount Everest. These impacts shaped the emergence of tectonic plates. Those relatively thin, migrating slabs of rock make up Earth's surface, floating over a layer of molten rock below. Over time, those slabs continually rise out of the molten rock and submerge again. Their activity, which renews Earth's surface, plays out over billions of years.

It also means that few surface rocks remain that are older than around 3.8 billion years old. So our planet holds no obvious record of events earlier than that.

In search of records for even earlier collisions, Marchi and her colleagues looked to the moon. Why? Its surface lacks the recycling action of plate tectonics, so the moon still shows scars from early asteroid impacts.

This animation shows the bombardment of early Earth by meteorites (depicted as circles). Although they eventually hit virtually every part of the planet, their sizes tend to decline with time (older hits in red, progressing to the more recent hits in dark blue).

Scientists can determine the ages of those very ancient impacts by crater counting. As a crater ages, newer meteorites pock its surface at each new impact site. During Apollo missions to the moon, astronauts retrieved moon rocks. Back on Earth, geologists dated rocks collected from lunar craters. Scientists can estimate the age of the moon's large and old craters by counting the number of smaller, fresher ones within the older ones.

Marchi's team used this information to estimate the number, frequency and size of asteroids that likely impacted early Earth. Of course this works only if they assume both had a similar impact history.

The team then created a computer program to simulate Earth's early asteroid bombardment. And the moon data suggest that asteroid impacts became smaller and less frequent with time. The computer also suggested that every bit of Earth's surface had at some point been covered in a magma-oozing crater created by an impact.

Three to seven asteroids larger than 500 kilometers (roughly 310 miles) across probably struck Earth during this early time. At least, that's what the computer program indicates. Any of these could have vaporized all of the planet's surface water. This hot, sizzling rock and lava would likely have destroyed any life then living on the surface.

The last of these life-sterilizing impacts took place 4.27 billion years ago, the researchers estimate. Fossils preserve evidence of life on Earth going back only 3.8 billion years (although some scientists dispute that earliest evidence).

Geochemist Jeffrey Bada works at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. He believes that a better understanding of early asteroid bombardment will help researchers probing the origins of life. Earth's really big asteroid smashups would have obliterated any cells that had evolved, he says. "Life could not have started prior to that and survived."

Power Words

asteroid A rocky object in orbit around the sun. Most orbit in a region that falls between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Astronomers refer to this region as the asteroid belt.

crater A large, bowl-shaped cavity in the ground or on the surface of a planet or the moon. They are typically caused by an explosion or the impact of a meteorite or other celestial body.

Hadean eon A period early in Earth's history that extended from 4.6 billion to 3.8 billion years ago. During this time, the solar system was still organizing into discrete objects, and the rocky planets (like Earth) were cooling into solidified structures. No known rocks exist from this period. Any that were around back then probably eroded, or they likely melted as they were drawn deep below Earth's surface through the movements associated with plate tectonics.

lava Molten rock that comes up from the mantle, through Earth's crust, and out of a volcano.

magma The molten rock that resides under Earth's crust. When it erupts from a volcano, this material is referred to as lava.

meteor A lump of rock or metal from space that hits the atmosphere of Earth. In space it is known as a meteoroid. When you see it in the sky it is a meteor. And when it hits the ground it is called a meteorite.

molten A word describing something that is melted, such as the liquid rock that makes up lava.

plate tectonics The study of massive moving pieces that make up Earth's outer layer, which is called the lithosphere, and the processes that cause those rock masses to rise from inside Earth, travel along its surface, and sink back down.

sterile An adjective that means devoid of life - or at least of germs. (in biology) An organism that is physically unable to reproduce.

tectonic plates The gigantic slabs - some spanning thousands of miles - that make up Earth's outer layer.

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Meteorites likely wiped out Earth's earliest life

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Repeatedly during its early history, Earth was bombarded by space rocks larger in diameter than the state of Utah. Such collisions likely killed off any emerging life on the planet's surface - probably again and again. The last of these death rocks struck around 4.3 billion years ago.