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 ...

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 ...

Our planet was born around 4.5 billion years ago. To understand this mind-bendingly long history, we need to study rocks and the minerals they are made of. The oldest rocks in Australia, which are ...

New research deepens the understanding of Earth's crust by testing and ultimately eliminating one popular hypothesis about why continental crust is lower in iron and more oxidized compared to oceanic ...

Reservoirs of hydrogen gas that form naturally in Earth's crust could help humans decarbonize. The challenge now is finding these accumulations and working out how best to mine them, experts say. When ...

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 ...

Researchers are exploring the idea that one hemisphere of Earth, dominated by the Pacific Ocean, is losing internal heat faster than the continental s ...

In 1981, scientists discovered one of the thinnest portions of the Earth’s crust — a 1-mile (1.6 kilometers) thick, earthquake-prone spot under the Atlantic Ocean where the American and African ...

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 ...