Earth's continents are slowly moving across the planet's surface due to plate tectonics, culminating in regions of crustal expansion and collision. In the latter case, high temperatures and pressures ...

Earth’s continental crust may have begun forming hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously thought, Yale scientists say — and the reason will be obvious to anyone who has ever baked a cake ...

Earth’s journey through the Milky Way might have helped create the planet’s first continents. Comets may have bombarded Earth every time the early solar system traveled through our galaxy’s spiral ...

The Earth's Moon had a rough start in life. Formed from a chunk of the Earth that was lopped off during a planetary collision, it spent its early years covered by a roiling global ocean of molten ...

Olivine cumulate from the Weltevreden Formation showing that although these cumulates are significantly altered, they still contain preserved unaltered olivine cores (microscopic image taken in ...

Chris Kirkland receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Phil Sutton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from ...

Scientists have shown how the freezing of a 'slushy' ocean of magma may be responsible for the composition of the Moon's crust. Scientists have shown how the freezing of a 'slushy' ocean of magma may ...

“To see a world in a grain of sand,” the opening sentence of the poem by William Blake, is an oft-used phrase that also captures some of what geologists do. We observe the composition of mineral ...