The ChemCam laser instrument on NASA’s Curiosity rover has turned its beam onto some unusually light-colored rocks on Mars, and the results are surprisingly similar to Earth’s granitic continental ...

Earth's continental configurations have changed dramatically over its billions of years' history, transforming not only their positions across the planet, but also their topography as expansion and ...

Our planet was born around 4.5 billion years ago. To understand this mind-bendingly long history, we need to study rocks and the minerals they are made of. The oldest rocks in Australia, which are ...

An artistic reconstruction of Earth during the Hadean eon (~4.5 billion years ago). Intense volcanic activity, heat from accretion, and frequent impacts kept the young Earth in a molten state. This ...

Ancient plate tectonics in the Archean period differs from modern plate tectonics in the Phanerozoic period because of the higher mantle temperatures inside the early Earth, the thicker basaltic crust ...