Researchers have examined tiny time capsules found in the oldest-known crystals in an attempt to settle a question that divides scientists: when did Earth’s tectonic plates begin to move? Plate ...

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 ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Plate tectonics is the means through which mountains are formed. The Baird Mountains in Alaska’s ...

The Earth’s crust is made of pieces call the tectonic plates. These plates move and shift and change to the face of the planet. How do they move and how fast? Science Trek is available to stream on ...

The Earth as we see it today is the result of billions of years of changes on the surface of the planet. The movement of tectonic plates determines the arrangement of the continents, and they're ...

Scientists have discovered a new layer of partly molten rock under the Earth’s crust that might help settle a long-standing debate about how tectonic plates move. Researchers had previously identified ...

A small amount of molten rock located under tectonic plates encourages them to move. This is what scientists have recently discovered. Their new model takes into account not only the velocity of ...

Hell, or something like it, may be a little closer than we thought. As a new study published in Nature Geoscience reveals, geologists at Cornell and the University of Texas have discovered a “hidden” ...

Do tectonic plates move because of motion in the Earth's mantle, or is the mantle driven by the plates' movement? Or could it be that this question is ill-posed? This is the point of view adopted by ...

Earth's crust is the planet's outermost layer. It is made of solid rock and sits on top of another layer, called the mantle.

The Earth with the upper mantle revealed. Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered a previously unknown layer of partly molten rock in a key region just below the tectonic ...