Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. David Bressan is a geologist who covers curiosities about Earth. Jan 25, 2024, 11:36am EST Jan 29, 2024, 08:24am EST Map of the ...

The interiors of rocky planets and moons tend to be pretty hot compared with their surfaces. This heat, which can be caused by a number of sources — such as tidal stretching and compression, the ...

Zircon crystals from Down Under revealed when the plates emerged. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Earth's tectonic plates have ...

A handful of ancient zircon crystals found in South Africa hold the oldest evidence of subduction, a key element of plate tectonics, according to a new study published in the open access journal AGU ...

In 2016, the geochemists Jonas Tusch and Carsten Münker hammered a thousand pounds of rock from the Australian Outback and airfreighted it home to Cologne, Germany. Five years of sawing, crushing, ...

Earth surface is covered with rigid plates that move, crash into each other and dive into the planet's interior. But when did this process begin? When you purchase through links on our site, we may ...

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 ...

The dance of the continents has been reshaping Earth for billions of years, creating the landscapes we walk on today. Scientists are unlocking secrets about how plate tectonics forged our modern world ...

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 ...

Earth's surface is broken up into large plates that rub against each other, causing earthquakes, volcanoes and large mountain ranges. But how unique is our planet's geology? When you purchase through ...

Plate tectonics may be unique to Earth and may be an essential characteristic of habitable planets. Estimates for its onset range from over 4 billion years ago to just 800 million years ago. A new ...