If you were to slice through it, you would see the Earth is divided into distinct layers. On top is the relatively thin crust where we live. Beneath that is the 2,900 km thick mantle layer. Then, ...

Scientists have dug themselves into a deep hole – literally. Drilling a record-breaking 1,268 meters down, an international ...

This article was originally published with the title “ The Plastic Layer of the Earth's Mantle ” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 207 No. 1 (July 1962), p. 52 doi:10.1038 ...

But to find that complexity, we must take the lessons of the boring billion to heart. Planets are not just a stage on which ...

The next layer is the mantle. Many people think of this as lava, but it's actually rock. The rock is so hot, however, that it flows under pressure, like road tar. This creates very slow-moving ...

When I was a kid, I liked to dig holes in my backyard in Cincinnati. My grandfather joked that if I kept digging, I would end ...

It is unlikely that the Earth's mantle — the layer beneath the crust and above the core — was completely homogeneous when it initially formed. Over time, cooling-induced convection as well as ...

China's Chang'e-6 robotic spacecraft in June made history by retrieving the first surface samples from the far side of the ...

The Earth is made of different layers: the core, mantle and crust. Plate tectonic theory shows that the crust of the Earth is split into plates (pieces of the Earth’s crust). The movement of ...

Deeper in the mantle, compositional stratification has been proposed, either just above the core–mantle boundary as a thick undulating layer, or in isolated piles 6.