James Dinneen

Human populations evolved in similar ways after we began farming An analysis of ancient and modern DNA suggests the extent of convergent evolution in different peoples around the world is even greater than we thought

To me, this shows the how genetic connections 🧬 between peoples can go beyond our shared ancestry. We also have similar or even identical genetic changes because of our shared lifestyles - that is, separate groups of modern humans evolved in similar ways 🧪

www.newscientist.com/article/2518...

What Crystals Older Than the Sun Reveal About the Start of the Solar System | Quanta Magazine Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way.

How was our patch of the Milky Way born? Microscopic grains older than the sun are providing clues. @jamesdinneen.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/what-crystal...

What Crystals Older Than the Sun Reveal About the Start of the Solar System | Quanta Magazine Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way.

If in need of something distant from current events, I wrote for @quantamagazine.bsky.social about meteorites that contain crystals older than the sun. The oldest date back to ~7 billion years, offering a physical measure of stars more than halfway back to the beginning of the universe itself.

What Crystals Older Than the Sun Reveal About the Start of the Solar System | Quanta Magazine Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way.

If in need of something distant from current events, I wrote for @quantamagazine.bsky.social about meteorites that contain crystals older than the sun. The oldest date back to ~7 billion years, offering a physical measure of stars more than halfway back to the beginning of the universe itself.

Nearing a decade @science.org, this is a point I should stress more. It's only $25/year to support one of the largest science-focused newsrooms in the world. Independent and nonprofit.

Tectonism rather than “snowball Earth” glaciation is responsible for the Great Unconformity | PNAS The Great Unconformity (GUn)—a widely recognized discontinuity and associated gap in the rock record between Precambrian and Cambrian rocks—represe...

Here's the original paper in @pnas.org:
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Ancient rocks point to an early start for the Great Unconformity—the biggest gap in Earth’s rock record Two-billion-year-old rocks in China suggest mountain building from Earth’s first supercontinent led to a planetwide burst of erosion

A billion years of missing time continues to confound geologists. For @science.org, I covered a new find in northern China that complicates debates on the source of the Great Unconformity:🧪⚒️

How earthquake scientists helped stop nuclear weapons testing Seismologists played a key role in establishing bans on underground nuclear blasts — those bans may be starting to break down

Seismologists played a key role in establishing bans on underground nuclear blasts — those bans may be starting to break down. Read all about it in my here newsletter: 🧪

NASA greenlights two earth science missions, to researchers’ relief Orbiting satellites will monitor changes in the stratosphere and on the planet’s surface

Researchers "overjoyed" #NASA is going to move forward with two new $355 million Earth science satellites. One watching stratosphere, one watching ice/forests.🧪 My latest for @science.org:

Traces of ancient seafloor cataclysms turn up in the Himalayas Vast undersea eruptions may be undercounted source of extinctions through Earth’s history

New story in @science.org. Evidence for two huge Triassic supereruptions found on Tibetan Plateau. 🧪#geology

Mysterious difference between Hawaiian volcanoes may reflect divide deep within Earth Hot mantle plume could be split in two, might eventually produce separate island chains

My latest for @science.org: the plume of hot rock beneath Hawaii may have split in two deep in the mantle. Tens of millions of years from now this could lead to parallel island tracks above the hotspot.🌋

Three Andean condor chicks hatch in Colombia as species nears local extinction Since July 2024, three Andean condor chicks have hatched at an artificial incubation program located near Bogotá, Colombia’s capital city, contributor Christina Noriega reported for Mongabay. The arti...

YES. Good news from South America.

Ancient tectonic plates are oozing along Earth’s core Thousands of earthquakes yield best picture yet of core-mantle boundary, shedding light on deep flows of viscous rock

Seismologists use 5000+ earthquakes to detect sunken slabs of ancient tectonic plates flowing along the edge of Earth's core. My latest from #AGU2025 for @science.org🧪:

This startup is about to conduct the biggest real-world test of aluminum as a zero-carbon fuel We got a sneak peek inside Found Energy’s lab, just as it gears up to supply heat and hydrogen to its first customer.

Can fuel made from aluminum scraps supply the clean heat industry needs? For @technologyreview.com, I got a sneak peak of Found Energy's largest aluminum-water reactor to date.

Exclusive: Climate scientists expect attempts to dim the sun by 2100 An exclusive New Scientist survey of leading scientists reveals widespread concern that schemes to tweak Earth’s atmosphere could launch within decades in a risky bid to cool the planet

Here is our exclusive survey asking leading climate scientists to give their views on solar geoengineering:

*66% believe we will see it attempted this century
*52% say it will probably be done by a "rogue actor"
*81% want an international treaty to manage risk

www.newscientist.com/article/2498...

Exclusive: Climate scientists expect attempts to dim the sun by 2100 An exclusive New Scientist survey of leading scientists reveals widespread concern that schemes to tweak Earth’s atmosphere could launch within decades in a risky bid to cool the planet

What do climate scientists really think about solar geoengineering?

For @newscientist.com, @tinymaddie.bsky.social and I surveyed 120 IPCC authors about their attitudes towards solar geoengineering given the world's failure to slash emissions on time. The results were surprising:

Exclusive: Climate scientists expect attempts to dim the sun by 2100 An exclusive New Scientist survey of leading scientists reveals widespread concern that schemes to tweak Earth’s atmosphere could launch within decades in a risky bid to cool the planet

Climate scientists believe humans will launch risky schemes to block radiation from the sun in a desperate bid to cool global temperatures before the end of the century - read more in our @newscientist.com excl from myself & @jamesdinneen.bsky.social www.newscientist.com/article/2498...

For those interested in this topic, @jamesdinneen.bsky.social wrote a great feature on the faltering land carbon sink this month for @newscientist.com www.newscientist.com/article/2497...

Illegal gold mining clears 140,000 hectares of Peruvian Amazon Armed criminal groups tear down precious rainforest to capitalise on record gold prices, report finds

Record gold prices = bad news for the Amazon
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Thanks much @scottdenning.bsky.social Peter Reich @umich.edu
David Schimel @nasajpl.bsky.social @anabastos.bsky.social Melissa Rose @worldresources.bsky.social Constantin Zohner @ethz.ch and others for insights.

One of Earth’s most vital carbon sinks is faltering. Can we save it? For decades, forest, grasslands and other land ecosystems have collectively absorbed up to a third of the carbon dioxide we emit each year - but this climate buffer may be collapsing far sooner than a...

Over the past two years, the land carbon sink appears to have weakened dramatically, driving the largest one year jump in atmospheric CO2 on record in 2024. Is this the end of the land carbon sink? I asked around for @newscientist.com.

Big U.S. West Coast earthquakes could come as a one-two punch Cascadia and San Andreas fault zones appear to generate synchronized earthquakes

Scary news for West Coast friends in my latest for @science.org. Disturbed ocean sediments off California suggest big earthquakes on the Cascadia fault can trigger big quakes on the San Andreas. The "Big One" could well become the "Big Two"...

NEWS: I'm writing a book about Earth's interior, from innermost inner core to the deep biosphere. Can't wait to share all I've learned about what's happening inside this planet and how it shapes the surface world we care about. 🌏 Subscribe here to follow along: northeastsouthwest.substack.com

We all must do our part.

Thanks to @xiyang.bsky.social, @drbiogc.bsky.social and the rest of THE LORACS team for having me along to see this important work in action.

Based on this research by Henry Yeung et al.
www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6...

Some ghosts captured on camera:

AI reveals vast ‘ghost forests’ along U.S. coast Machine learning method counts nearly 12 million dead trees, many likely killed by rising seas

I joined a team of ecologists wading through the muck of the Carolina coast in search of "ghost forests" killed by rising seas for @science.org. We were guided by a a new map that reveals millions of dead trees standing along the East Coast, marking an overlooked consequence of climate change...

Honored to have won an @sciencewriters.org "Science in Society" award for my @newscientist.com story on the Panama Canal's chronic water shortages. It's something the canal's visionary builders never imagined would be possible in one of the rainiest parts of the planet...

Atmospheric hydrogen is rising, which may be a problem for the climate Ice core records of atmospheric hydrogen reveal a huge rise in concentration since the Industrial Revolution which has contributed to global warming – and could sway the debate over hydrogen as a fuel

Whoa! First long-term ice core record of atmospheric *hydrogen*, which amplifies warming effects of methane, shows there has been a 60% rise since the industrial revolution.
rt/ @tinymaddie.bsky.social
www.newscientist.com/article/2497...