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.
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
Helen Brand, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation
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
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.
When mud, fluids and gases erupt at the Earth’s surface, they hint at what’s happening underground, allowing scientists to build a more comprehensive 3D view of what’s going on inside our planet.
Transantarctic Mountains peaks are some of the only parts of the continent not buried beneath ice.
Matt Makes Photos / shutterstock
Scientists used satellites to map tens of thousands of glacial landforms in Antarctica’s highest mountains.
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)
Sophisticated equipment on the Perseverance rover is helping answer some of the many questions researchers have about Mars’ geology over time.
This is an enhanced satellite image of Western Australia’s Great Sandy Desert. Yellow sand dunes cover the upper right, red splotches indicate burned areas, and other colours show different types of surface geology.
USGS/Unsplash
The United States Geological Survey has a vast collection of satellite images capturing breathtaking geological features of our planet. As a geologist, I’ve picked eight of the most fascinating.