In September 2025, scientists captured a phenomenon never before seen in real time: a tectonic plate actively tearing apart ...

The shape of the Earth's oceans and continents is dictated inexorable movements of the tectonic plates, but where did those ...

Computer simulations suggest that a collision with another planetary object early in Earth’s history may have provided the heat to set off plate tectonics. By Lucas Joel Some 4.5 billion years ago, ...

Earth’s plate tectonics could be a passing phase. After simulating rock and heat flow throughout a planet’s lifetime, researchers have proposed that plate tectonics is just one stage of a planet’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 ...

The plate tectonics that determine the shape of our continents may have originated from a huge impact billions of years ago. This huge collision with the Earth, thought to have occurred around 4.5 ...

Have tectonic plates changed speed over the last 3 billion years? The answer has far-reaching implications, as plate tectonics affected everything from the supply of vital nutrients for early life to ...

A new study of rocks that formed billions of years ago lends fresh insight into how Earth's plate tectonics—the movement of large pieces of Earth's outer shell—evolved over the planet's ...

There’s no geological artist quite like Earth’s plate tectonics. Thanks to this ongoing operation, we have mountains and oceans, terrifying earthquakes, incandescent volcanic eruptions, and new land ...

Modern plate tectonics may have gotten under way as early as 3.2 billion years ago, about 400 million years earlier than scientists thought. That, in turn, suggests that the movement of large pieces ...

The research reveals how one of Earth’s defining geologic features likely formed — and set the stage for the emergence of life Abigail Eisenstadt Zircons are the oldest minerals in the world and come ...

There may be more habitable planets in the universe than we previously thought, according to geoscientists, who suggest that plate tectonics -- long assumed to be a requirement for suitable conditions ...