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 ...

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

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 ...

A new study presented at the 2025 EPSC/DPS Joint Meeting proposes that the rarity of specific geological and atmospheric conditions necessary for technologically advanced life significantly limits the ...

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The closest technological species to us in the Milky Way galaxy could be 33,000 light years away and their civilization would have to be at least 280,000 years, and possibly millions of years, old if ...

Rocks in Australia preserve evidence that plates in Earth’s crust were moving 3.5 billion years ago, a finding that pushes back the beginnings of plate tectonics by hundreds of millions of years.

It has been thought that plate tectonics were a significant factor in the shaping of our planet and the evolution of life.

Subduction zones, where one tectonic plate dives underneath another, drive the world’s most devastating earthquakes and tsunamis. How do these danger zones come to be? A study in Geology presents ...

For millions of years, Earth’s moving plates have sculpted continents, carved oceans, and built massive mountain ranges. Yet some of these giant structures vanished deep into the mantle, hidden from ...

On Earth, the land moves. Over millions of years, continents shift and the entire surface of the planet reshapes itself. The driver of all this is plate tectonics: Earth’s surface is divided into ...