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The volcanic eruptions that bring diamonds to Earth’s surface are driven by ‘pillars of heat’ stretching deep inside the planet.
An aerial view of the Mauna Loa volcano, which erupted on the island of Hawaii in December 2022.
Andrew Richard Hara/Getty Images News
As they shape the Earth, volcanoes inspire and terrify humans.
A typical view on the Nullarbor Plain: an expansive, treeless landscape that captures the relentless dryness of Australia’s interior.
Matej Lipar
New research on the Nullarbor Plain reveals the ancient climate change that separated Australia’s east and west ecosystems, shaping today’s biodiversity.
Soil was key to making the Earth habitable.
EyeEm / Alamy Stock Photo
What fossil records tell us about when the Earth was first covered by plants.
‘Earthrise,’ a photo of the Earth taken by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, Dec. 4, 1968.
NASA/Bill Anders via Wikipedia
The Earth isn’t permanent, but it was here for four billion years before humans arrived and should be here for several billion more.
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The 2.29 billion-year-old crater in Western Australia offers clues about what massive space rock impacts meant for the early Earth.
An artist’s conception of the Artemis spacecraft orbiting the moon.
(NASA)
Canadian Jeremy Hansen will be one of the next astronauts on the Artemis II mission. This announcement signals a new era in Canada’s role in space exploration.
A 2kg gold nugget found near Ballarat in 2019.
Minelab Electronics / AAP
A ‘second gold rush’ has seen amateur and professional miners return to Victoria with modern technology.
Warrumbungle national park.
colinslack/Shutterstock
As continents grind across ‘hotspots’ in Earth’s mantle, we can get volcanoes erupting on the surface. Studying these can reveal much about our planet’s evolution.
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Zircons formed in the hellish Chernobyl meltdown are changing how geologists understand their favourite crystals.
Kimberlite volcanic rock with mantle crystals (green olivine and purple and orange garnet) and fragments of country rock (light grey).
Diamonds form alongside a distinct purple companion. We studied it to reach a conclusion about how rare they might actually be.
Sander Lenaerts/Unsplash
To us, Earth’s landscapes might change very little. But over millions of years, our planet’s surface has shifted in innumerable ways.
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Earth doesn’t just have an inner core. It also has an innermost inner core, a solid ball within the solid ball in the very middle of the planet.
The building blocks of the Giza pyramids contain trillions of fossilised remains of an ocean-dwelling organism called foraminifera.
Sui Xiankai/Xinhua via Getty Images
Fossils aren’t just pieces of the past that allow scientists to look backwards. They can play a role in modern policy decision-making, too.
Lloyd Homer / GNS Science
We may never know exactly when the next big quake will hit – but we can have a pretty good idea of the odds.
Image of Gosses Bluff taken from the ISS.
NASA
Meteor impacts are an inevitable part of being a rocky planet in space. The craters they leave behind are a window into the tumultuous history of Earth.
The giant bird Genyornis went extinct in Australia around 50,000 years ago.
Peter Trusler
A puzzle over the identity of an extinct bird that laid eggs across Australia has been solved.
The slice you see cut out of the Earth reveals its core, depicted here in bright yellow.
fhm/E+ via Getty Images
Starting at the surface, you would have to dig nearly 2,000 miles before reaching the Earth’s core. No one could survive that trip – and the 10,000-degree F heat once there would vaporize you anyway.
Human remains dating back more than 30,000 years were found at Paviland cave in Gower.
Left: Leighton Collins/Shutterstock; right: Ethan Doyle White CC BY-SA 3.0.
It’s been 200 years since the discovery of one of the oldest human burial sites in western Europe on the Gower peninsula in south Wales.
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Earthquakes originating underneath the ocean are often accompanied by tsunami warnings. Here’s what determines the tsunami risk.