Small amounts of gas have been discovered in Baffin Bay, to the southwest of Greenland. The drilling company, Cairn Energy, believes this could lead to the discovery of oil in the region. [More]

High winds have helped spread several wildfires in the states of Colorado and Oklahoma. About 230 houses and 120 campsites have been evacuated. [More]

Heavy rains in Guatemala have caused a series of landslides, one of which has covered a portion of the Inter-American Highway, where approximately 100 people are thought to have been buried. [More]

CNN has a collection of photos from the magnitude 7.0 earthquake near Christchurch, New Zealand, detailing damage done to various buildings, roads, and vehicles. [More]

An oil drilling company has offered a drill that might be able to reach the 33 trapped miners in Chile in about two months. It is being moved from a location in northern Chile. When it begins work there will be three holes in progress to fee the miners. [More]

The mayor and several other Christchurch, New Zealand leaders comment on the recent earthquake and their thoughts on recovery. [More]

Chief Oil & Gas announced that they will voluntarily disclose the additives that are used in their hydraulic fracturing fluid at every Marcellus Shale well site in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. [More]

The City of Houston, Texas is considering a plan to allow a horizontal well to drain natural gas from beneath several city parks in exchange for lease payments and potential royalties. [More]

This video features a “zero-energy” home. One that uses energy from the grid but also has an energy production system that feeds energy back into the grid. On average it will use zero energy and not cost a lot more than the typical house built on a 25′ x 100′ lot. [More]

“A new image of two tangled galaxies has been released by NASA’s Great Observatories. The Antennae galaxies, located about 62 million light-years from Earth, are shown in this composite image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), the Hubble Space Telescope (gold and brown), and the Spitzer Space Telescope (red). The Antennae galaxies take their name [...] [More]

“New research from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope reveals that asteroids somewhat near Earth, termed near-Earth objects, are a mixed bunch, with a surprisingly wide array of compositions. [. . .] The Spitzer observations of 100 known near-Earth asteroids demonstrate that the objects’ diversity is greater than previously thought.” – Quoted from NASA news release. [More]

The recent magnitude 7.0 earthquake that occurred near Christchurch, New Zealand caused significant damage. Fortunately quality construction methods there are likely the reason that the number and severity of injuries was very low. [More]

Several LNG, liquefied natural gas, import terminals in the United States have gone from being highly promoted to abandoned. The killer for these projects is the recent development of shale gas resources in several parts of the country. [More]

Earth Observatory has a satellite image pair that shows before and after images of flooding near the cities of Thatta and Sujawal, Pakistan. Sujawal and surrounding lands suffered severe flooding. “As floodwaters headed south, some northern parts of the country began to slowly dry out, although survivors had to cope with homelessness, hunger, and waterborne [...] [More]

“Experiments prompted by a 2008 surprise from NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander suggest that soil examined by NASA’s Viking Mars landers in 1976 may have contained carbon-based chemical building blocks of life.” Quoted from the NASA press release. [More]

The United States currently imports most of its rare earth minerals from China. A newly discovered deposit in Alaska might be the largest documented heavy rare earth elements deposit in the United States. [More]

The water level of the Amazon River has dipped to a 40-year low in north-eastern Peru, causing disruption in the transportation of food and supplies. [More]

A magnitude 7.0 earthquake occurred about 20 miles northwest of Christchurch, New Zealand on Saturday, September 4 at 4:35 AM local time. USGS instrumental intensities are up to IX. [More]

This video provides an overview of yesterday’s Mariner Energy oil platform fire in the Gulf of Mexico. This was a production platform servicing existing wells, not a drilling rig like the one associated with the BP spill. [More]

In 1938 a powerful hurricane hit the coast of New York and New England, killing at least 50 people on Long Island and over 600 at other locations. It destroyed over 50,000 homes. [More]