The dance of the continents has been reshaping Earth for billions of years, creating the landscapes we walk on today.

Emerging evidence suggests that plate tectonics, or the recycling of Earth's crust, may have begun much earlier than ...

A study led by researchers from the University of Sydney and the University of Adelaide has revealed how the breakup of an ...

The tiny Juan de Fuca plate is largely responsible for the volcanoes that dot the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The plates make up Earth's outer shell, called the lithosphere. (This includes ...

The interiors of rocky planets and moons tend to be pretty hot compared with their surfaces. This heat, which can be caused by a number of sources — such as tidal stretching and compression, the ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I cover aerospace, astronomy & hosted The Cosmic Controversy Podcast. An earth-like planet’s ability to globally recycle its ...

All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. Learn more. Earth’s ...

A research team led by Academician Jin Zhijun from the Institute of Energy, Peking University, has revealed how interactions ...

(Inside Science) — Shifting, slipping and colliding tectonic plates played an essential role in the emergence and evolution of life on Earth. Such tectonic activity generated volcanoes that spewed ...

On Earth, the theory of plate tectonics describes the way large pieces of the planet’s crust move and interact. These pieces, or plates, slide over the mantle, the malleable outer layer of Earth’s ...

Plate tectonics, the idea that the surface of the Earth is made up of plates that move apart and come back together, has been used to explain the locations of volcanoes and earthquakes since the 1960s ...