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 ...

It’s right there in the name: “plate tectonics.” Geology’s organizing theory hinges on plates—thin, interlocking pieces of Earth’s rocky skin. Plates’ movements explain earthquakes, volcanoes, ...

Scientists warn that the plate beneath Gibraltar arc will begin to shift toward the Atlantic within 20 million years.

Ars Technica has been separating the signal from the noise for over 25 years. With our unique combination of technical savvy and wide-ranging interest in the technological arts and sciences, Ars is ...

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 ...

Scientists have discovered a new layer of partly molten rock under the Earth's crust that might help settle a long-standing debate about how tectonic plates move. Researchers had previously identified ...

New information about conditions that can cause Earth's tectonic plates to sink into the earth has been released in a new report. In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of ...

Using ricocheted vibrations from dynamite blasts, researchers have glimpsed a layer of gooey material sandwiched between the Pacific tectonic plate and the underlying mantle. If present beneath all ...

Experiments carried out at Oxford University have revealed that tectonic plates are weaker than previously thought. The finding explains an ambiguity in lab work that led scientists to believe these ...

Subduction zones, where one tectonic plate dives underneath another, drive the world’s most devastating earthquakes and tsunamis. How do these danger zones come to be? A study in Geology presents ...

Plate tectonics, the idea that the surface of the Earth is made up of plates that move apart and come back together, has been used to explain the locations of volcanoes and earthquakes since the 1960s ...