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

For decades, the end-stage life of a subduction zone existed only in theory. Now, for the first time in geologic history, scientists are bearing witness to the Juan de Fuca Plate tearing apart and ...

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 ...

A careful analysis of the complex boundary where four tectonic plates meet reveals that one of the slabs is tearing itself ...

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 ...

New research reveals that Earth’s so-called “Boring Billion” was a time of dramatic change beneath the surface.

Researchers used small zircon crystals to unlock information about magmas and plate tectonic activity in early Earth. The research provides chemical evidence that plate tectonics was most likely ...

This period was anything but boring. There was a time in Earth’s history that was so stable, geologists once called it the Boring Billion. But the fact is, this period was anything but boring. In fact ...

A 6.3-magnitude quake near Mazar-e Sharif exposed Afghanistan's seismic threat. Experts explained how the collision of the ...

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