Magma becomes lava when it rises up to the Earth’s surface, like when the Nyiragongo volcano erupted in the Democratic ...

As a youngster growing up in New York, Graham Baird always was interested in science and the natural world, and in college he was fascinated with how igneous and metamorphic rocks formed. As an ...

Sedimentary rocks are made up of pieces of older rocks (igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary) and organic remains (shells, bone, etc.). When rocks break apart from erosion they are transported by ...

Igneous rocks are formed when molten rock (magma) cools and solidifies, with or without crystallization, either below the surface as intrusive (plutonic) rocks or on the surface as extrusive (volcanic ...

A rock on Mars being studied by NASA's Curiosity rover is unlike any Martian stone ever seen, and is surprisingly similar to an unusual, but well-known, kind of rock on Earth. This type of rock is the ...

While many rocks don’t burn, some of them do. It depends on what the rocks are made of – and that’s related to how they were formed. Rocks that burn when they get heated up are combusting. This means ...

During the nearly 14 months that it has spent on the red planet, Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, has scooped soil, drilled rocks, and analyzed samples by exposing them to laser ...

A rock on Mars being studied by NASA's Curiosity rover is unlike any Martian stone ever seen, and is surprisingly similar to an unusual, but well-known, kind of rock on Earth. This type of rock is the ...

We often talk about climate change, melting glaciers, or strange landforms. But we rarely think about something that’s always around us– rocks. They don’t make the news, but they’re everywhere. We ...

A rock on Mars being studied by NASA's Curiosity rover is unlike any Martian stone ever seen, and is surprisingly similar to an unusual, but well-known, kind of rock on Earth. This type of rock is the ...

Analysis of Jake_M, the first rock Curiosity tested, shows that it’s unlike any rocks previously found on Mars, and probably formed after hot magma came into contact with water. Image via ...