Artist’s impression of Theia colliding with the Earth billions of years ago.
Hernán Cañellas
The Moon was formed when it collided with Earth billions of years ago.
Mining an asteroid probably won’t look exactly like mining does on Earth, but some principles will stay the same.
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Upcoming NASA missions will help scientists understand the composition of asteroids – which could inform companies one day hoping to commercially mine asteroids.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU
A distant lump of space rock may have a surprising amount in common with the core of our own planet.
An illustration of the asteroid Psyche, orbiting between Mars and Jupiter.
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Liftoff to the distant asteroid is scheduled for Oct. 5, 2023 – the beginning of a six-year journey to one of the most unusual objects in the solar system.
Bjoern Wylezich / Shutterstock
Scientists were not previously certain how the precious stones arrived at the Earth’s surface.
‘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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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 slice you see cut out of the Earth reveals its core, depicted here in bright yellow.
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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.
An artist’s impression of the Earth around 2.7 billion years ago in the Archean Eon. With green iron-rich seas, an orange methane-rich atmosphere and a surface dominated by oceans, the Archean Earth would have been a very different place.
(Illustration by Andrey Atuchin)
Could tectonic processes in the early Earth have contributed to the rise of oxygen?
Lucapa Diamond Company/EPA
Geology experts explain why coloured diamonds are so much rarer than clear ones – and why the newly discovered Lulo Rose might become the most expensive diamond in history.
The land surface heats up during the day because of solar radiation coming in from the sun.
Ed Connor/Shutterstock
This is a really important question, and one which climatologists work on in many aspects of their jobs.
Argonne National Laboratory/flickr
8,000 tonnes of molten iron solidifies in Earth’s inner core every second – but it’s not distributed equally.
4 billion years ago, the Earth was composed of a series of magma oceans hundreds of kilometres deep.
Larich/Shutterstock
The rocks provide rare evidence of a time when Earth’s surface was a deep sea of incandescent magma.
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The updated methods are providing a clearer picture of how Earth and its inhabitants evolved over the past 60,000 years - and thus, providing new insight into its future.
St Helena, where Earth’s magnetic field behaves strangely.
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The Earth’s magnetic field is a lot weaker than we would expect around the island of St Helena.
It’s long been a mystery how fast the Earth’s magnetic field changes.
Andrey VP/Shutterstock
Changes in the Earth’s magnetic field pose a great risk to electronic infrastructure.
The view of our planet from aboard the International Space Station.
Expedition 43/NASA
Of all the planets in the solar system, there’s a reason we call Earth home. It’s made of just the right stuff. It’s not too small, or too big, or too hot or too cold. It’s just right.
Robert Lucian Crusitu/Shutterstock
Fossil fuels are heating the atmosphere – but the fact that we’re burning them may not be the only reason.
Material from the Earth’s core has been leaking into the mantle through activity that led to volcanic eruptions such as that helped form the Hawaiian islands.
EPA/Bruce Omori/Paradise Helicopters
New findings suggest the core has been leaking for the past 2.5 billion years, and that could help scientists understand how the core was formed.
It’s core to life on Earth.
Shutterstock.
The Earth’s core is cooling down, and one day it will be completely solid – when that happens, Earth might look a lot like Mars.