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 ...

Scientists have discovered a new layer of partly molten rock under the Earth's crust that might help settle a long-standing debate about how tectonic plates move. The molten layer is located about 100 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Tectonic map of the Earth. The first continental crust on Earth formed more than 3 billion years ago. Likely the first fragments formed by partial melting and re-crystallization of the primordial ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Earth's hot, gooey center and its cold, hard outer shell are both responsible for the creeping ...

Plate tectonics doesn’t rumple the surfaces of Earth’s supersized cousins, new research suggests. Simulating the extreme pressures inside giant exoplanets called super-Earths, researchers discovered ...

Plate tectonics is the process of continents on the Earth drifting and colliding, rock grinding and scraping, mountain ranges being formed, and earthquakes tearing land apart. It makes our world ...