The interiors of rocky planets and moons tend to be pretty hot compared with their surfaces. This heat, which can be caused by a number of sources — such as tidal stretching and compression, the ...

A study proposes that imbalanced forces and torques in the Earth-moon-sun system drive circulation of the whole mantle. The new analysis provides an alternative to the hypothesis that the movement of ...

Learn about Alfred Wegener's Continental Drift Theory—how continents once formed Pangaea, evidence supporting it, and its link to modern Plate Tectonic Theory.

The Earth formed 4.6 billion years ago and has been continuously changing ever since. For instance, the Himalayas continue to ...

Jan. 18 (UPI) --New mantle convection models show heat from Earth's core is a driving factor of plate tectonics. Until now, scientists believed cooling was the primary factor. Current tectonics models ...

On a time scale of tens to hundreds of millions of years, the geomagnetic field may be influenced by currents in the mantle. The frequent polarity reversals of Earth's magnetic field can also be ...

A mid-ocean ridge or mid-oceanic ridge is an underwater mountain range, formed by plate tectonics. This uplifting of the ocean floor occurs when convection currents rise in the mantle beneath the ...

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 ...

A study led by geophysicist Anne M. Hofmeister in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis proposes that imbalanced forces and torques in the Earth-moon-sun system drive circulation of ...