Scientists discovered plate anomalies in Earth's mantle using seismic wave analysis. These mysterious structures challenge tectonic theories.

About 56 million years ago, Europe and North America began pulling apart to form what became the ever-expanding North Atlantic Ocean. Vast amounts of molten rock from Earth's mantle reached the ocean ...

Scientists at Stanford have unveiled the first-ever global map of rare earthquakes that rumble deep within Earth’s mantle rather than its crust. Long debated and notoriously difficult to confirm, ...

For decades, scientists have been baffled by two enormous, enigmatic structures buried deep inside Earth with features so vast and unusual that they defy conventional models of planetary evolution.

Seismic waves from earthquakes have always offered a window into Earth’s hidden interior. For decades, researchers believed they had a firm grasp on how these waves revealed the rocky mantle’s secrets ...

Geologists have spent decades trying to punch through Earth’s crust to reach the mantle, the vast rocky layer that makes up most of the planet’s volume. In 2023, an international team working from a ...

A frozen continent at the bottom of the world sits over the deepest dip in Earth’s gravitational pull, a feature that has persisted for roughly 70 million years. Scientists have long known about this ...

All the activity on Earth’s surface — erupting volcanoes, shifting tectonic plates, restless seas and myriad forms of life — depends on the two-part engine under the hood. Directly beneath Earth’s ...

Some 4.6 billion years ago, Earth was nothing like the gentle blue planet we know today. Frequent and violent celestial impacts churned its surface and interior into a seething ocean of magma—an ...

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." To understand the mantle—the largest layer of Earth’s rocky body—scientists drill deep cores out of the ...