A map of gravity variations on the Earth's seafloor, which mostly correspond to underwater ridges and the edges of Earth's tectonic plates. NASA Earth Observatory Plate tectonics may not be a ...

Freelance writer Amanda C. Kooser covers gadgets and tech news with a twist for CNET. When not wallowing in weird gear and iPad apps for cats, she can be found tinkering with her 1956 DeSoto. Carole ...

It's the first time Earth's geologic record — information found inside rocks — has been used to create an animation of this kind. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate ...

From time to time, when Earth's tectonic plates shift, the planet emits a long, slow belch of carbon dioxide. In a new modeling study published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, R. Dietmar ...

The earthquakes that rocked Haiti and Chile this year were caused by the Earth's shifting tectonic plates, which float on the planet's molten core in constant sliding motion. Now, researchers have ...

In 2021, geologists animated a video that shows how Earth's tectonic plates moved over the last billion years. The plates move together and apart at the speed of fingernail growth, and the video ...

Computational modeling shows that plate tectonics weren't necessary for early continents. The formation of Earth's continents billions of years ago set the stage for life to thrive. But scientists ...

According to a study published in Scientific Reports, anomalies deep within the Earth's mantle appear to be remnants of submerged tectonic plates—but located far from where such plates are typically ...

The activity of the solid Earth – for example, volcanoes in Java, earthquakes in Japan, etc – is well understood within the context of the ~50-year-old theory of plate tectonics. This theory posits ...

For hundreds of millions of years, Earth’s climate has warmed and cooled with natural fluctuations in the level of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere. Over the past century, humans have pushed CO₂ ...

Ancient plate tectonics in the Archean period differs from modern plate tectonics in the Phanerozoic period because of the higher mantle temperatures inside the early Earth, the thicker basaltic crust ...

Memorizing seven continents feels settled, like learning the alphabet. A new study argues the ground rules are less tidy.