Picture the Earth’s crust and you most probably think of dense, dry rock. You don’t imagine a goey, honey-like substance trickling down into the planet’s deep underbelly. And yet, new research has ...

Like a moth in a cocoon, the metamorphosis of Earth's crust from molten goop to solid land is hidden from view, leaving scientists to guess at how the eons-long process unfolds. Using nearly four ...

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 ...

Beneath the American Midwest, on the continent of North America, the underside of Earth's crust is dripping into the planetary interior. There, blobs of molten rock are coalescing in the upper mantle ...

An artistic reconstruction of Earth during the Hadean eon (~4.5 billion years ago). Intense volcanic activity, heat from accretion, and frequent impacts kept the young Earth in a molten state. This ...

Fresh evidence suggests early Earth wasn’t locked under a rigid stagnant lid but was already experiencing intense subduction. Ancient melt inclusions and advanced simulations point to continents ...

Seismic mapping of North America has revealed that an ancient slab of crust buried beneath the Midwest is causing the crust above it to "drip" and suck down rocks from across the continent. When you ...

New research reveals that Earth’s continents owe their stability to searing heat deep in the planet’s crust. At more than 900°C, radioactive elements shifted upward, cooling and strengthening the ...

Researchers have discovered that chemical reactions in underwater hydrothermal vents could have produced the necessary ...

At a busy street crossing, people wait for the signal to change. When one person steps out first, others soon follow. Scientists in Amsterdam have found that this same kind of behavior happens at a ...