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.
Giant meteorite impacts may have created the land we live on
Earth’s interior 80 million years ago with hot structures in yellow to red (darker is shallower) and cold structures in blue (darker is deeper).
Ömer Bodur/Nature
Earth’s magnetic field locks information into lava as it cools into rock. Millions of years later, scientists can decipher this magnetic data to build geologic timelines and maps.
St Helena, where Earth’s magnetic field behaves strangely.
Umomos/Shutterstock
A new array of seismometers provides a glimpse of what’s happening deep beneath this geologic fault. New data help explain why the north and south of the region are more seismically active than the middle.
Evidence is mounting that water came from within the Earth not from asteroids or comets.
Satellite image of California’s San Andreas fault, where two continental plates come together.
NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team
Fifty years on from a groundbreaking paper, geophysicists have progressed from believing continents never moved to thinking that every movement may leave a lasting memory on our planet.
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
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…