The mantle, a rocky layer accounting for more than 80% of Earth's volume, circulates at rates of only a few centimeters per year. This circulation drives plate tectonics and influences major ...

The ground we stand on rests upon massive rock plates. However, there is no "sea of molten magma" spreading out beneath those ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. David Bressan is a geologist who covers curiosities about Earth. An international team of researchers investigated how Earth’s ...

Researchers may have found a missing link in how Earth's mantle gets wet: newly discovered iron minerals that can store water at the extremely high temperatures and pressures present near our planet's ...

Earth's deep interior still shapes the world above your feet. Water trapped far below the surface helps control how rocks move, melt, and recycle through the mantle. Some of that water carries a ...

The supercontinent cycle describes the episodic assembly and dispersal of Earth’s continental masses over intervals of roughly 400–600 million years. At its heart lies a dynamic interplay between ...

Planet Earth has some pretty great qualities going for it. (Negative reviews mostly revolve around the staff and clientele.) Pretty high on the list of positives is a richly oxygenated atmosphere. But ...

Numerical modelling of mantle convection dynamics provides a virtual laboratory for probing the slow, heat-driven circulations that shape Earth’s interior and surface evolution. By solving the coupled ...

Colossal volcanic eruptions like the kind that may have obliterated the dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago are caused by mantle plumes that rise from shifting underground mountains deep within ...

About 4.5 billion years ago, it is believed that a protoplanet the size of Mars, named "Theia," collided with the newborn, primitive Earth. In astronomy, this event, known as the "Giant Impact," has ...