For decades, the prevailing theory behind the mass extinction that ended the reign of the dinosaurs has pointed to a catastrophic asteroid impact near today’s Yucatán Peninsula. The massive crater of ...

Volcanoes inspire awe with spectacular eruptions and incandescent rivers of lava, but often their deadliest hazard is what ...

It creates the Earth's magnetic field and is about 1,400 miles (2,300 kilometers) thick. The next layer is the mantle. Many people think of this as lava, but it's actually rock. The rock is so hot ...

When volcanic eruptions make headlines, the images often depict fiery lava and towering ash clouds. But beneath Antarctica’s ...

Earth is divided into four layers: the inner core ... pushed upwards by the force of the plates' movement. Tall, steep volcanoes can also form as a result of the denser rock melting and the ...

Earth's crust today has a surprisingly similar composition to the planet's first outer shell, or "protocrust," new research ...

Most volcanoes—Mount St. Helens, say, or Mount Fuji—grow along the boundary between tectonic plates, where collisions melt the earth’s upper layers and fuel eruptions. By contrast ...

A giant patch of black, fossilized lava that was spewed across the Sahara desert over millions of years looks like an eerie, ...

Because salt has been detected on Mars, it is likely that Martian mudflows are also salty, much like Earth’s mud volcanoes, ...