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There are a number of theories about where the moon came from. Our best guess is that it was formed when the Earth was hit by a large object known as Theia. The impact threw up huge amounts of debris into orbit, which eventually coalesced to form the moon. There’s a problem with this theory. The mathematical models show that most of the material that makes up the moon should come from Theia. But samples from the Apollo missions show that most of the material on the moon came from Earth. A paper out earlier this week in Nature Geoscience...

YELLOWSTONE volcano could be about to erupt and challenge humanity’s existence as a spate of mini-quakes have been felt around the fearsome caldera. During the month of April, a total of 63 earthquakes struck around the Wyoming based supervolcano. All of the tremors were relatively small, with the largest registering at 2.6 on the Richter scale, hitting on April 29. But experts have warned that it is not necessarily about the strength of an earthquake around a volcano, but more the quantity of them. Some scientists believe that tremors around a volcano could be a sign that it might blow....

Mount Rainier, one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the U.S. and in the world, is widely expected to erupt again. The only unknown facing scientists is when the massive stratovolcano, 4,392 meters tall and located 87 kilometers southeast of Seattle in Washington state, will finally explode. Scientists from the United States and Norway recently mapped the electric and magnetic signatures of magma flows beneath Mount Rainier (pronounced “ray-near”). They’ve also discovered a mammoth magma reservoir below the mountain that will fuel any eruption with massive magma flows. The research found out that magma or fluid molten rock is trapped...

Tamu Massif: The Most Massive Volcano Most of the world's largest features are so clearly visible that they have been known and recognized for hundreds of years. One exception is Tamu Massif. It is now recognized to be a single volcano - instead of a volcano complex with multiple vents. Tamu Massif has a footprint that covers more area than any other volcano - about 120,000 square miles (310,800 square kilometers) - an area about the size of New Mexico. It also has a larger mass than any other known single volcano on Earth. How could this enormous volcano have...