Geologists think early Earth may have looked much like Iceland—where jet-black lava fields extend as far as the eye can see, inky mountainsides rise steeply above the clouds and stark black-sand ...

Scientists have found that 4.02-billion-year-old silica-rich felsic rocks from the Acasta River, Canada -- the oldest rock formation known on Earth -- probably formed at high temperatures and at a ...

The rocks at the surface of the modern Earth are broadly divided into two types: felsic and mafic. Felsic rocks are generally relatively low density — for a rock — and light in colour because they are ...

Top: Map of thorium concentrations near Compton crater on the lunar far side. Bottom: LRO view of the felsic highland volcano. After Jolliff et al. (2011), Nature Geoscience 4, 566. The flood of new ...

Plate tectonics – the process that shapes Earth’s surface and causes earthquakes – may have begun at least half a billion years earlier than thought. And it may have been triggered by staggeringly ...

The early Earth may have looked much like Iceland—where lava fields stretch as far as the eye can see, inky mountainsides tower above the clouds and stark black sand beaches outline the land. But the ...