Image: Tiny crystals called zircons are used to date oceanic crust. A newly developed method that detects tiny bits of zircon in rock reliably predicts the age of ocean crust more than 99 percent of ...

Geoscientists are using ancient chert rocks from the Pacific's Shatsky Rise to understand Earth's thermal history. Oxygen isotopes within these silica-rich rocks act as tiny thermometers, revealing ...

In 1981, scientists discovered one of the thinnest portions of the Earth’s crust — a 1-mile (1.6 kilometers) thick, earthquake-prone spot under the Atlantic Ocean where the American and African ...

On April 12, 2023, geologists, microbiologists and other scientists sailed to the Atlantis Massif, a 14,000-foot underwater mountain sitting on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. The plan: To dig into ...

An international research team has discovered that a subduction zone's age affects the ability for it to recycle water between the Earth's surface and its inner layers. The more mature the subduction ...

Teeming with heat-loving microbes, samples of fluid drawn from the crustal rocks that make up most of the Earth’s seafloor are providing the best evidence yet to support the controversial assertion ...

The King's Trough Complex is a several-hundred-kilometer-long, canyon-like system of trenches on the North Atlantic seafloor. Its formation was long thought to be the result of simple stretching of ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

New research deepens the understanding of Earth's crust by testing and ultimately eliminating one popular hypothesis about why continental crust is lower in iron and more oxidized compared to oceanic ...

Continents are part of what makes Earth uniquely habitable for life among the planets of the solar system, yet surprisingly little is understood about what gave rise to these huge pieces of the planet ...