How is it that Earth developed an atmosphere that made the development of life possible? A study published in the journal Nature Geoscience links the origins of Earth’s nitrogen-rich atmosphere to the…
Plate tectonics – the large-scale movement of Earth’s lithosphere or outer layers – started around three billion years ago, but how those movements started was a bit of a mystery – until today…
Earth was still a violent place shortly after life began, with regular impactors arriving from space. For the first time, scientists have modelled the effects of one such violent event – the strike of…
Devastating supervolcanoes can erupt simply due to changes that happen in their giant magma chambers as they slowly cool, according to a new study. This finding marks the first time researchers have been…
Meteorite impacts can be very destructive. One that fell in Mexico around 66m years ago created a 180km crater and caused the extinction of dinosaurs while spewing debris and molten rock into the air…
Our planet’s interior is complex and has many layers. Their formation and structure contain many unsolved mysteries. But new research is providing some clues about how Earth’s internal structure may have…
A little more than 90 years ago, British geologist Herbert Hall Turner noticed some earthquake data that suggested a surprising explanation. The only way to explain it was if the quake had occurred hundreds…
Injecting fluids into the Earth, whether to recover natural gas or to obtain thermal energy from the planet, can cause earthquakes. New reports that look at American fracking, deep waste-water injection…