Geologists discovered "gigantic fortresses" under the Earth's crust, which have provided insight into the workings of the Earth's mantle.

By simulating the movement of two continent-sized Big Lower-Mantle Basal Structures, or BLOBs, researchers may have uncovered ...

Geologists recently unveiled groundbreaking seismic evidence of massive, ancient “fortresses” located nearly 1,800 miles below the Earth’s surface, in the mantle. These colossal structures are not ...

Earth’s continents may look fixed on a globe, but they’ve been drifting, splitting and reforming over billions of years – and ...

Geologists from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) have made a breakthrough in understanding how Earth's early continents formed during the Archean time, more than 2.5 billion years ago. Their ...

Earth Earth’s mantle may have hidden plumes venting heat from its core A ‘ghost plume’ identified deep in the mantle beneath Oman suggests there may be more heat flowing out of Earth’s ...

Once near the surface, these plumes help to cause volcanic eruptions. “ [W]e think that those mantle plumes originate at the edges of the LLSVPs,” said Duess.

The researchers created the first global three-dimensional map of electrical conductivity in the mantle. Results of their study are published this week in the journal Nature.

Taking a closer look with independent measurements, Pilia confirmed that a mantle plume—nicknamed “Dani” after his son—likely existed roughly 660 kilometers below the surface.

Journal paper: A two-stage mantle plume–sagduction origin of Archean continental crust revealed by water and oxygen isotopes of TTGs, by Dingyi Zhao et al., Science Advances (2025).

If this “Dani plume” truly is a ghost plume, it would be the first one ever detected, and could possibly lead scientists to re-examine just how much heat is moving from the core-mantle ...