An accessible rooftop that curves to meet the ground will distinguish the Hida Takayama University, which Japanese studio Sou Fujimoto Architects is designing in Hida City, Japan.

The private university, which is expected to open in April 2024, is set to be built on a rural site in the town that is located in the mountainous Gifu Prefecture.

Sou Fujimoto Architects’ design comprises two curved buildings that will be separated by a courtyard. The larger of the two structures will be topped by the giant accessible rooftop described by the studio as “an open hill”.

Researchers have demonstrated in the lab how well a mineral common at the boundary between the Earth’s core and mantle conducts heat. This leads them to suspect that the Earth’s heat may dissipate sooner than previously thought.

Magnetic field information could provide earlier disaster warning to at-risk regions, potentially saving lives.

A new study finds the magnetic field generated by a tsunami can be detected a few minutes earlier than changes in sea level and could improve warnings of these giant waves.

Tsunamis generate magnetic fields as they move conductive seawater through the Earth’s magnetic field. Researchers previously predicted that the tsunami’s magnetic field would arrive before a change in sea level, but they lacked simultaneous measurements of magnetics and sea level that are necessary to demonstrate the phenomenon.

Predjama is one of the most extraordinary castles in the world, built in the mouth of a cave complex at the end of a valley in southwest Slovenia.

Set halfway up a 400-foot (123-meter) vertical cliff face, it appears in records from 1,202 and is listed by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest cave castle.

With a Renaissance facade dating back to the 1580s, the word “majestic” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Yet for tour guide and historian Vojko Jurca, one of the highlights is, on first appearances, a little underwhelming.

Valentino Gareri Atelier has unveiled renderings of the Cacao Eco Village in Ecuador for local farmers that will feature 3D-printed buildings made from recycled cacao.

Cacao Eco Village will be located on the coast of Ecuador’s Manabi province where cacao farmers live and work to produce chocolate through extracting cocoa butter and solids from cacao beans.

Valentino Gareri Atelier designed the project for Ecuadorian chocolate manufacturer Muze, as well as nonprofit organisation Avanti, with construction scheduled to begin this year.

A rare volcano-triggered tsunami sparked by the eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai in Tonga could have been caused by shock waves or shifting underwater land, experts said Monday.

“A volcanic-source tsunami event is rare but not unprecedented,” a post on the website for New Zealand’s geological hazard monitoring system GNS said Monday.

GNS Tsunami Duty Officer Jonathan Hanson said it probably occurred in part thanks to a previous eruption of the same volcano one day earlier.