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)
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
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.
Umomos/Shutterstock
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.
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
Are we headed to a magnetic reversal and all the global disruption that would bring? Enter archaeomagnetism. A look at the archaeological record in southern Africa provides some clues.
Dating the Earth’s enigmatic inner core: a Pluto-sized ball of iron that is super hot and frozen at the same time.
Kelvinsong/wikimedia
The Earth’s inner core is more than half a billion years older than previously thought, shows a study. The results could help us better understand the processes that shape the planet’s surface.
No Earths were harmed in the making of this image.
Johan Swanepoel/Shutterstock
The planet Earth’s inner core is not a single solid mass but comprised of two layers, and new evidence about the core’s composition from a team of US and Chinese geophysicists suggests that the innermost…
Pro Vice-Chancellor of Research at the University of Technology Sydney and Chief Investigator of ARC Centre for Excellence in Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, University of Technology Sydney