The interiors of rocky planets and moons tend to be pretty hot compared with their surfaces. This heat, which can be caused by a number of sources — such as tidal stretching and compression, the ...

A new study carried out on the floor of Pacific Ocean provides the most detailed view yet of how the earth’s mantle flows beneath the ocean’s tectonic plates. The findings, published in the journal ...

Earth's hot, gooey center and its cold, hard outer shell are both responsible for the creeping (and sometimes catastrophic) movement of tectonic plates. But now new research reveals an intriguing ...

Deep beneath our feet, approximately 2,890 kilometers underground, lies one of Earth's most mysterious regions. The boundary between our planet's molten outer core and solid mantle acts like a massive ...

Earth is truly unique among our Solar System’s planets. It has vast water oceans and abundant life. But Earth is also unique because it is the only planet with plate tectonics, which shaped its ...

The Earth with the upper mantle revealed. Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered a previously unknown layer of partly molten rock in a key region just below the tectonic ...

If Yale researcher Jun Korenaga is correct, then habitable planets may be rarer than previously thought. According to a recently published paper, the ability of Earthlike planets to self-regulate ...

A groundbreaking study by ETH Zurich reveals that solid rock in Earth's D" layer, located deep within the mantle, can move like a fluid while remaining solid. Researchers used diamond anvil cells and ...

If you’ve ever felt the earth shudder beneath your feet during an earthquake, you’re no stranger to the effects of Earth’s ever-roaming tectonic plates. While scientists have linked the movements of ...

Drifting of the large tectonic plates and the superimposed continents is not only powered by the heat-driven convection processes in the Earth's mantle, but rather retroacts on this internal driving ...