Some 4.6 billion years ago, Earth was nothing like the gentle blue planet we know today. Frequent and violent celestial impacts churned its surface and interior into a seething ocean of magma—an ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. New model suggests an ocean of magma formed within the first few hundred million years of Earth's ...

Astronomers have identified the clearest signs yet of an atmosphere around a rocky planet outside our Solar System, marking a ...

When giant impacts brought Earth its precious metals such as gold and platinum long ago, those metals remained near our planet's surface thanks to a molten magma ocean. This ocean, formed by the ...

Previous research estimated that it took hundreds of million years for the ancient Earth's magma ocean to solidify, but new research narrows these large uncertainties down to less than just a couple ...

The history of Earth's continents might be different from what we first thought. The most popular theory of how the continents formed billions of years ago may not be right, according to a paper in ...

Scientists examine a large dike, formed from a sheet of magma that came to Earth’s surface millions of years ago during the Columbia River Basalt eruptions. These dikes fed magma to massive eruptions.

About 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) below our feet, two enormous patches of strange rock sit above Earth’s core. New computer models now tie these deep structures to slow chemical leaks between the ...

Earth held a deep ocean of magma beneath its surface in its early history, new research finds, potentially explaining odd anomalies seen in the mantle today. This basal magma ocean has been hotly ...

An illustration of Earth as it existed during part of its formation billions of years ago, when an ocean of magma covered the surface of the planet and stretched thousands of miles deep into the core.

Early in the formation of Earth, an ocean of magma covered the planet’s surface and stretched thousands of miles deep into its core. The rate at which that “magma ocean” cooled affected the formation ...