New research is reshaping how scientists understand the earliest days of Earth’s formation—suggesting that the deep interior ...

Earth’s rocky layers are mysteriously low in nitrogen compared with carbon and argon. A scientific team explored our planet’s ...

Deep below the Earth's crust, molten rock rises and falls ... by including a softer layer at the base of the moon's mantle, it was easier to reproduce the observed gravity measurements.

Lithospheric dripping occurs when the underside of Earth's rocky crust is heated to a certain temperature. As the rock melts, ...

The mantle is made up of different layers. The upper mantle is hard but below that is semi-molten rock called magma. Crust The crust is the outer layer of the Earth on which we live. It is the ...

(b) Compression causes the metals in the molten zone to solidify and sink. (c) Then thermal convection mixes and redistributes the metal-impregnated mantle components over long geologic time frames.

The Earth was a fiery, molten ball, with a churning magma ocean ... components rose and then solidified to create the silicate mantle. This process, called the core-mantle differentiation, shaped ...

(This includes the crust and uppermost part of the mantle.) Churning currents in the molten rocks below propel them along like a jumble of conveyor belts in disrepair. Most geologic activity stems ...