A little knowledge of rocks and minerals will help you identify everything from jewelry to fossils. While reading this article may not turn you into a geologist, it should give you the basic ...

It’ll be a snap to identify gemstones once Robert Downs finishes his library of spectral fingerprints for all the Earth’s minerals. Downs is almost halfway there. So far, the associate professor of ...

Everyone switched off their headlamps and there we stood together in total darkness, inside the San Gabriel Mountains. Yes, inside. I had joined a local caving group in an attempt to understand more ...

You hear complaints about what our government bureaus produce, but I have evidence of the contrary: a twelve-hundred-page book produced by the U.S. Department of The Interior in 1968 titled, “A ...

Swiss naturalist and physician Philippus Theophrastus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim - better known as Paracelsus -was among the first naturalists to study how the fumes, dust and ash found in a ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. David Bressan is a geologist who covers curiosities about Earth. There would be no bright and colorful fireworks without rocks and ...