Continental clues: Modern continental rocks carry chemical signatures from the very start of our planet’s history, challenging current theories about plate tectonics. Researchers have made a new ...

What is the chemical composition of the Earth’s interior? Because it is impossible to drill more than about ten kilometres deep into the Earth, volcanic rocks formed by melting Earth’s deep interior ...

A study suggests that Earth's crust in the Hadean eon, more than 4 billion years ago, was more similar to the modern continental crust than previously thought, with implications for the timing of ...

Scientists show that remnants of the roots of Earth's first crust are still present in the terrestrial mantle and contribute to magmas erupted at the surface over Earth's history. In an international ...

Earth's continents have been leaking nutrients into the ocean for at least 3.7 billion years, new research suggests. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Earth's crust today has a surprisingly similar composition to the planet's first outer shell, or "protocrust," new research finds. This early rocky shell featured chemical signatures previously ...

Current understanding is that the chemical composition of the Earth's mantle is relatively homogeneous. But experiments now show that this view is too simplistic. Their results solve a key problem ...

Earth’s surface environment hosts large reservoirs of hydrogen (H, mainly in the form of water, H2O), nitrogen (in atmospheric N2) and carbon (mainly in carbonate rocks). H, N and C are sometimes ...

“To see a world in a grain of sand,” the opening sentence of the poem by William Blake, is an oft-used phrase that also captures some of what geologists do. We observe the composition of mineral ...

Researchers have confirmed that a rare geological process called lithospheric dripping is pulling pieces of the Earth’s lower ...

Continent-sized structures of mineral protruding from the lower mantle towards Earth's outer core may be contributing to an instability of our planet's magnetic field. The two odd formations – one ...

Earth's continents have been leaking nutrients into the ocean for at least 3.7 billion years, new research suggests. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.