A team of Australian researchers are about to set off on a landmark voyage to discover more about the Earth beneath our oceans, and what triggers underwater earthquakes. Read live updates of the cruise as they go — both personal reflections and scientific background to the cruise.

Earth Science - everyone should know a little, but it is also important for Australia to have access to deep expertise.

Buoyant material rising in the Earth's mantle is expected to spread out when it reaches the base of a tectonic plate like pancake batter dropped into a pan.

This isn’t a painting or a stained-glass window — it’s a microscope image of light shining through the Earth’s mantle (image from the author, Heather Handley)

Staff from the Australian Antarctic Division are now installing seismometers on the Macquarie island as part of the "Macquarie Ridge in the 3D" project.

Mantle plumes are the best explanation we have for much of Earth's intraplate volcanism but some remain doubtful despite 50 years of rigorous testing.

In Eastern Asia, Jurassic and Cretaceous intraplate volcanism and magmatism differ in their spatial distribution and composition. A combination of plate kinematic and geodynamic models provides clues for their causes.

The largest earthquakes occur at subduction zones, where one plate descends beneath another into the underlying mantle, at a convergent plate boundary. Some subduction zones seem to host more large earthquakes than others (Fig. 1), potentially reflecting the influence of large-scale geodynamic processes, which vary from one subduction zone to the next.

Rare Earth Elements are critical for low-carbon transport and energy generation. What are they, how do we find them and extract them ?

Australia is losing capacity in geoscience education and research at a time it is most needed. Six of Australia's most influential Earth scientists offer their solutions.