Seismic mapping of North America has revealed that an ancient slab of crust buried beneath the Midwest is causing the crust ...

The Earth's interior is composed of four layers, three solid and one liquid—not magma but molten metal, nearly as hot as the surface of the sun. The deepest layer is a solid iron ball, about ...

Extraction of the continental crust has left the Earth's mantle depleted in certain elements. Some rocks from the Arctic Ocean floor suggest that the extent of depletion and heterogeneity in the ...

A recent study has unveiled that Earth's mantle is divided into two distinct sections, a phenomenon linked to the formation and subsequent breakup of the ancient supercontinent Pangaea. This ...

Earth is our home planet, and it's the only place in the universe where we know for certain that life exists. Earth formed over 4.5 billion years ago from a swirling cloud of gas and dust squished ...

Scientists have long been puzzled by volcanoes that erupt far from the edges of tectonic plates—known as intraplate volcanoes ...

The Earth is made up of different layers: Therefore, instead of tectonic plates moving because of the convection currents, evidence suggests it is the plates that drive the convection. Slab pull ...

The mantle transition zone (MTZ), which occurs 410–670 kilometers below Earth's surface, may store several oceans' worth of water. This water, which is carried to such depths by subducting tectonic ...

Plate tectonics describes the movement and interaction of tectonic plates on Earth's surface. This movement is driven by the very slow creeping motion of Earth's mantle, called convection, which ...