When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Plate tectonics may have played a larger role in the evolution of life on Earth than we ...

We often affiliate plate tectonics with earthquakes, as we are all taught in school that the shifting of plates leads to big shakes. But plate tectonics serve a far more important job to the planet ...

Plate tectonics might have gotten a fitful start on the early Earth. Today, the process of Earth’s crustal movement called plate tectonics dictates nearly everything about the planet’s appearance, ...

Given that all of the Hawaiian Islands were created by volcanic activity, it is somewhat surprising that only one of the islands possesses any active volcanoes. Why did the volcanoes that built the ...

The first ruptures in early Earth’s skin formed because of the weakness of rock minerals merely a millimeter wide, two scientists propose. The small minerals’ behavior created boundaries defining ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Most of the world's earthquakes occur along the boundaries between Earth's constantly moving ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. David Bressan is a geologist who covers curiosities about Earth. Based on a series of models considering how the continents were ...

The Pacific and Australian plates collide and interact in complex ways around New Zealand. Electrical resistivity data reveal that subduction-zone fluids exert an important influence on deformation in ...

Along submarine mountain ranges, the mid-ocean ridges, forces from the Earth's interior push tectonic plates apart, forming new ocean floor and thus moving continents about. However, many features of ...

Jupiter's icy moon Europa is criss-crossed by extensional features. A tectonic reconstruction suggests that Europa's extension is balanced by subduction — if so, Earth may not be the only planetary ...

The emergence of plate tectonics is arguably Earth's defining moment, the authors of a new Nature paper write. Out of all the planets we’ve looked at carefully, Earth is the only one that has a hard ...