Geology

Giant blobs nestled deep in the Earth may influence everything from the structure of island chains to mass-extinction events.

After successfully predicting laboratory earthquakes, a team of geophysicists has applied a machine learning algorithm to quakes in the Pacific Northwest.

Dark matter may occasionally interact with minerals in the earth, leaving telltale tracks that physicists hope to decipher.

Planetary geologist Meenakshi Wadhwa uses Martian meteorites to trace the history of our solar system.

Simple physical principles can be used to describe how rivers grow everywhere from Florida to Mars.

Evidence for life in 3.7-billion-year-old rocks appears to be crumbling away.

A series of fossil finds suggests that life on Earth started earlier than anyone thought, calling into question a widely held theory of the solar system’s beginnings.

Jason Morgan developed the theory of plate tectonics in 1967 while working among a critical mass of talented geophysicists at Princeton University.

Geochemical signals from deep inside Earth are beginning to shed light on the planet’s first 50 million years, a formative period long viewed as inaccessible to science.