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 ...

The plate tectonics theory established in the 20th century has been successful in interpreting many geological phenomena, processes, and events that have occurred in the Phanerozoic. However, the ...

Earth’s continental crust has grown and been reshaped over more than four billion years through the interplay of mantle dynamics, magmatic differentiation and crustal recycling. In its infancy, a ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. Are we alone, and if so, why? So far, the search for ...

Some 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-sized object smashed into the nascent Earth, spinning off our moon. Now a team of scientists proposes this giant impact did even more: The collision left behind ...

Earth's surface is a turbulent place. Mountains rise, continents merge and split, and earthquakes shake the ground. All of these processes result from plate tectonics, the movement of enormous chunks ...

An international team has made a significant breakthrough in understanding the tectonic evolution of terrestrial planets. Using advanced numerical models, the team systematically classified for the ...

In the heart of Asia, deep underground, two huge tectonic plates are crashing into each other — a violent but slow-motion bout of geological bumper cars that over time has sculpted the soaring ...