Plate boundaries are where the action is. A large fraction of all earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and mountain building occurs at plate boundaries. It is also where most of the people on Earth live.

The first ruptures in early Earth’s skin formed because of the weakness of rock minerals merely a millimeter wide, two scientists propose. The small minerals’ behavior created boundaries defining ...

Which forces and mechanisms determine the height of mountains? A group of researchers from Münster and Potsdam has now found a surprising answer: It is not erosion and weathering of rocks that ...

The Earth's plates jostle about in fits and starts that are punctuated with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. 4 min read There are a few handfuls of major plates and dozens of smaller, or minor, ...

Scientists are constantly on a mission to untangle how Earth alone among the planets was able to evolve complex life. We know that Earth's past internal movements of the tectonic plates under our feet ...

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 ...

Researchers have produced a new estimate for the origin of Earth's plate tectonics—the movement of large chunks of the planet's outer layer, or crust. Although there is broad consensus that plate ...

Which forces and mechanisms determine the height of mountains? A group of researchers has now found a surprising answer: It is not erosion and weathering of rocks that determine the upper limit of ...

For years, many scientists had thought that plate tectonics existed nowhere in our solar system but on Earth. Now, a University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), scientist has discovered that the ...