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 ...

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 ...

For centuries, scientists have tried to answer the question, “What’s the Earth made of?” While drilling projects and geological studies have revealed clues about the planet’s crust, the deeper layers ...

Earth’s earliest crust, formed over 4.5 billion years ago, has long been thought to have lacked the complex chemical features associated with continental crust. However, a recent study published in ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Earth's first crust looked ...

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 ...

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 ...

When the supercontinent Pangea began to fragment around 200 million years ago during the Early Jurassic, it reshaped the face of the planet. Vast new oceans opened, continents drifted apart and the ...

The Earth's mantle might not always move along in lockstep with the overlying tectonic crust—as set out in science textbooks for decades—but may instead behave differently. This is the conclusion of ...

Stable parts of the Earth's crust may not be as immovable as previously thought. While much of the crust is affected by plate tectonic activity, certain more stable portions have remained unchanged ...

Map of the Earth showing tectonic plates. Early Earth likely had no plate tectonics, but a solid outer crust with no tectonic activity covered the entire planet. After being broken up by convection ...