Deep inside Earth, far below the crust and mantle we learn about in school, scientists are mapping strange, continent-sized structures that appear to shape everything from volcanic hotspots to the ...

Seismic imaging has exposed two massive zones hidden deep in Earth’s mantle. These giant blobs, known as large low-velocity provinces, or LLVPs, stretch beneath Africa and the Pacific. They are so ...

The Ontong Java Plateau (OJP), located in the Pacific Ocean, formed around 110 to 120 million years ago through massive submarine volcanic eruptions. This event is considered the most extensive ...

Scientists discover a hidden structure beneath Australia that explains the origin of its strangest and most scattered volcanoes ...

The illustration shows a cutaway revealing the interior of early Earth with a hot, melted layer above the boundary between the core and mantle. Scientists think some material from the core leaked into ...

Deep beneath your feet, far beyond where any drill can reach, something strange is hiding. Two continent-sized blobs of rock sit just above Earth’s core, hot, dense and stubbornly different from ...

Olivine, the most common mineral in the upper 400 km (about 250 miles) of Earth’s interior, has long been studied for how it deforms. Scientists have identified two primary directions of dislocation ...

A major impact can eradicate entire ecosystems. It can melt rocks, send debris around the planet, and create a dent in the ...