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 ...

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 is the theory that Earth's outer layer is made up of plates, which have moved throughout Earth's history. The theory explains the how and why behind mountains, volcanoes, and ...

The emergence of plate tectonics in the late 1960s led to a paradigm shift from fixism to mobilism of global tectonics, providing a unifying context for the previously disparate disciplines of Earth ...

Carbon released from Earth's spreading tectonic plates, not volcanoes, may have triggered major transitions between ancient ...

Build mountains. Trigger volcanoes. Create new sea floor. You now have the power to change the landscape with the slightest push of your mouse. Four types of plate tectonic activity are demonstrated ...

Plate tectonics (from the Late Latin tectonicus, from the "pertaining to building") is a scientific theory that describes the large-scale motion of Earth's lithosphere. This theoretical model builds ...

Earth’s crust looks solid from the surface, but it is broken into a shifting mosaic of slabs that slowly rearrange oceans and continents. Understanding how those tectonic plates first formed is one of ...

New research challenges conventional wisdom by demonstrating that mid-ocean ridges and continental rifts, not volcanic ...