Computers may now be better than ever at revealing how the giant plates of rock that we live on will drift, crash and dive against each other to shape Earth throughout its history, scientists say.

Geophysicists can use a new model to explain the behavior of a tectonic plate sinking into a subduction zone in the Earth's mantle: the plate becomes weak and thus more deformable when mineral grains ...

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 ...

Temporal evolution for the viscosity (upper row) and compositional (lower row) field of the 3D reference case showing LLSVP-sourced plume-induced subduction initiation. (a–) Model snapshots at 0 Myr ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The Andes Mountains are much taller than plate tectonic theories predict they should be, a fact that has puzzled geologists for decades. Mountain-building models tend to focus on the ...

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 ...

The undersea plate boundary beneath the Strait of Gibraltar, known as the Gibraltar arc, is slowly moving into the Atlantic ...

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument have mapped the surface of LHS 3844 b, a rocky ...

Early in Earth’s history, the heat left over from the collision that formed the Moon left its surface an ocean of magma. As it cooled, its crust was frequently shattered by massive impacts that ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

(l-r) Jonny Wu, assistant professor of geology in the UH Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Spencer Fuston, a third-year geology doctoral student, applied a technique developed by the UH ...