Earth's inner structure is a dynamic system of layers in constant, slow motion

Movement of molten metal around its solid inner core creates Earth's magnetic field

According to the geodynamo process, the rotation of the planet and the looping, convective flow of electrically conductive iron and nickel produce dynamic electric currents, which generate a self-sustaining magnetic field. This is unlike natural, stationary magnets, which possess a static field created when the metal cooled and its atoms aligned with Earth's magnetic field.

Take a journey to the Earth's core

This animated video takes you on a journey through the different layers of the Earth's core, with insight into what makes up each shell. Earth's outer core, which is about 1,400 miles thick, is made up of liquid iron and nickel at a blistering...

How we know what’s deep inside the Earth, despite never traveling there

We'll likely never see the Earth's core, but we can make educated guesses about what it's like down there. Nearly as hot as the sun's surface and under impossibly high pressure, the inner Earths extreme conditions make it impossible to explore. Yet, seismic waves during earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and light waves from the sun provide fascinating insights about our planet’s mantle, crust, and core.

Scientists investigate Earth's interior by studying seismic waves

Scientists investigate Earth's interior by studying seismic wavesBelow Earth's atmosphere lies the crust, which extends to the Mohorovičić discontinuity between five and 20 miles below Earth's surface. Below the crust lies the mantle, the liquid-metal outer core, and the solid inner core, which surpasses 5,200 degrees Celsius (9,392 degrees Fahrenheit).

Convection flows in Earth’s mantle drive the movement of tectonic plates

These processes transfer heat from Earth’s core to the surface via rising magma plumes, while cooler, denser rock falls into the mantle at rates similar to human fingernail growth. These rates are determined by combining seismic data with computer simulations to model Earth’s interior.

Heat slowly moves through Earth's mantle like softened wax

Energy trapped during Earth's formation and released via the radioactivity of elements is carried by convection currents towards the surface, while cooler, denser material sinks. The planet's core is almost as hot as the sun's surface.

As of 2025, humans have only dug 0.2% the way to Earth's center

The Kola Superdeep Borehole revealed two billion-year-old fossils and underground water, but the immense temperature and pressure prevented further tunneling. Beyond those depths, scientists know of Earth's interior by analyzing how seismic waves move.

200 million years of tectonic plate movement

The Earth's internal forces have continuously pushed and reshaped how the planet's land masses are arranged. From one supercontinent hundreds of millions of years ago, to present day, the Earth has looked dramatically different throughout the...

Variations in rock types contribute to uncertainty in earthquake predictions

Different rock types can withstand different amounts of stress before breaking and melt at different temperatures within Earth’s interior, preventing uniform modeling. The planet’s uneven mass distribution also creates variations in gravitational force, complicating mantle movement.

Earth’s major tectonic plates make up 95% of its surface

Tectonic plates are pieces of Earth’s lithosphere, which consists of the crust and the solid, upper layer of the mantle. Segments of major plates can break and form minor or microplates, whose total number varies based on ongoing geological activity.

View a diagram of Earth's atmosphere, which is composed of five layers

Starting from the surface, the troposphere is home to Earth's weather, followed by the stratosphere, which houses the ozone layer, and the mesosphere, which burns up most debris from space. Above these layers lies the thermosphere, where auroras are produced, and the exosphere, which lacks a clear outer boundary as it fades into outer space.

Earth's core is leaking precious metals, including gold

Earth's core, containing 99.999% of all known gold, is leaking trace amounts of precious metals into the mantle. Advanced isotopic methods have detected this leakage at volcanoes in Hawai'i, providing new insights into the movement of material beneath Earth's surface.

Earth's core is about 2.5 years younger than its surface according to relativity

Due to differences in where objects are located within gravitational fields, time will run at different rates, which has major impacts on technology that relies on synchronization. For example, GPS satellites run about 38 microseconds faster every day than clocks on Earth's surface, resulting in GPS discrepancies of about six miles, were it not for software corrections.

What makes the Earth shake?

Researchers are demystifying the science of earthquakes—from their origins deep within the Earth to the scales that measure their strength. This article, which was part of a series of weekly reports from Cornell University, serves as a guide to...

Records of Earth's magnetic field on the seafloor validated plate tectonics

Matching glacial, fossil, and rock records, mountain ranges, and continental shapes across oceans was insufficient evidence for continental drift. Precise measurements of magnetic minerals on the ocean floor revealed seafloor spreading, which could only be explained by moving landmasses.

Stagnant lids found on Mercury, Mars, and the moon prevent tectonic activity

Unlike Earth’s lithosphere, which is composed of plates dragged by convection, the outer shells of observed terrestrial bodies in the solar system are not exposed to sufficient stress to be pulled apart. Earth is expected to develop a stagnant lid in about 1.45 billion years.

How diamonds form in the deep earth

Deep within Earth's mantle, diamonds form from carbon-bearing fluids. The formation of these beautiful gemstones, the only direct samples we have of the mantle, helps scientists uncover how carbon functions deep inside our planet. Understanding this complex process aids in the exploration for new diamond deposits.

View the internal structure of the sun and its puzzling surrounding atmosphere

From the stellar core to the surface, the sun's density decreases from more than 10 times that of lead to 0.00001% that of air, while temperatures drop from millions to thousands. Temperatures increase from the sun's surface to the outermost layer of its atmosphere—the corona—a phenomenon whose explanation is still under investigation.

How neutron stars resemble Earth, including harboring an atmosphere and 'mountains'

These stars maintain an atmosphere of hydrogen, helium, and carbon at approximately 2,000,000 degrees Celsius (3,600,000 degrees Fahrenheit), only a few thousandths of a millimeter thick, which envelops "mountains" about a millimeter high. Its interior consists of an inner and an outer crust surrounding inner and outer cores, all held together by enormous gravitational forces despite spinning multiple times a second.

Earth's smooth, continuous motion as it orbits the sun prevents detectable motion

Although humans are sensitive to acceleration, Earth's nearly circular orbit around the sun and its slow spin relative to its size produce negligibly small, minimally changing accelerations. However, the changing seasons and the day-night cycle are evidence of Earth's movement through space, as verified by satellites and telescopes.

Layers in sediment cores hold clues to Earth’s past climate

By analyzing materials such as pollen and algae within the layers of these cores, which are collected from lakes and oceans, scientists can learn what the environment and climate were like when that layer formed.

An interactive look at Earth's history

This interactive module allows students to explore the science of Earth’s deep history, from its formation 4.5 billion years ago to modern times.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

Global climate models simulate Earth system interactions and how human activity impacts climate

By splitting the planet into tiny 3D grid cells, supercomputers can run thousands of equations for each cell to determine the movement of energy, moisture, and other elements across Earth. The equations can also incorporate greenhouse gases to determine how humans affect the climate.

Understanding how atomic structure contributes to each element's properties

The outermost layer of electrons in an atom dictates how it will bond to other atoms. These bonds determine whether elements exist as solids, liquids, or gases in the environment and other characteristics. For example, electrons are freely shared between atoms in metallic bonds, allowing them to immediately re-emit light that strikes them, thus making most metals shiny.

The Standard Model reveals an underlying organization to the universe

Using the framework of quantum field theory, it structures all known particles into 12 matter particles, alongside five particles that carry three of the four fundamental forces. Although remarkably precise and predictive, it cannot yet explain gravity, dark matter, or dark energy.

While the sun's gravity keeps the planets in orbit, their gravity also pulls on the sun, causing it and everything else in the solar system to orbit around a mutual balance point called the barycenter—the true center of the solar system.

Stars appear to twinkle because turbulence in the motion of molecules in Earth's atmosphere causes light to bend and wiggle rapidly on its way to the surface—a phenomenon called scintillation.

Volcanoes 'die' when their supply of magma runs out, if they are shifted away from their underlying magma reservoir, or if they get clogged by collapsing or their magma cooling back into rock.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Explore the animals that populate the depths of the ocean, from fish and coral in the first few hundred feet, all the way down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Learn how your body is, scientifically, like a firework with its own slow, controlled burn.

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day

All rainbows are 'raincircles' caused by water droplets separating white sunlight into a spectrum of colors, but Earth's surface blocks the bottom half of the circle from our line of sight.

Neutron stars, the remains of some massive stars after they explode in a supernova, are the densest directly observable objects in the universe.

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states

The boiling temperature of water decreases with increasing elevation because the molecules need less energy to overcome the lower atmospheric pressure associated with thinner air.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

The syncytiotrophoblast is the outer layer of the placenta and the largest human cell, spanning an area about twice that of a king-sized bedsheet.

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

Pure water does not conduct electricity because this flow of energy requires the movement of charged particles, and water is a neutral molecule.

Corals are themselves not coral reefs—the term refers to the tiny marine invertebrates that build the rigid reef.

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

While El Niño moves warm Pacific Ocean waters east along the equator, La Niña moves them west, shifting where rainfall will become more common for months.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is independent of Iran's regular army and is one of the most powerful and influential military-political organizations in the Middle East.

The price of gas is a composite made up of several different factors, with the federal gas tax making up less than 20% of what drivers pay at the pump.