Figure 1: A model of the subducting Pacific plate. Plate tectonics has been a fundamental tenet of Earth science for almost 50 years. It is the foundation of modern Earth science, and provides a ...

Sept. 15 (UPI) --A new study suggests tectonic plates are weaker than previously thought. The findings, shared this week in the journal Science Advances, explain the discrepancy between rock strength ...

Our planet has an outer layer made up of several plates, which move relative to one another. While we may take this knowledge for granted, this theory of plate tectonics was only formulated in the ...

An enduring question in geology is when Earth's tectonic plates began pushing and pulling in a process that helped the planet evolve and shaped its continents into the ones that exist today. Some ...

No one can travel inside the earth to study what happens there. So scientists must do their best to replicate real-world conditions inside the lab. "We are interested in large-scale geophysical ...

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 ...

How is plate subduction factory operated during continental collision? How do physical mixing and chemical reaction proceed at colliding continental margins of different depths? How is continental ...

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 ...

A mysterious layer lies beneath Earth's massive tectonic plates. Sandwiched between two rock layers — the rigid lithosphere and the more pliable asthenosphere— this thin boundary is like the jelly in ...

Scientists have found evidence of plate tectonics on Jupiter’s moon Europa. This indicates the first sign of this type of surface-shifting geological activity on a world other than Earth. Researchers ...

A long-lost tectonic plate that once underpinned what is today the South China Sea has been rediscovered 20 million years after disappearing. The plate is known only from a few rock fragments from the ...