When it comes to 3-D puzzles, Rubik's Cube pales in comparison with the latest creation from a team of geophysicists. They have just put the finishing touches on a 20-year effort to precisely describe ...

If you’ve ever felt the earth shudder beneath your feet during an earthquake, you’re no stranger to the effects of Earth’s ever-roaming tectonic plates. While scientists have linked the movements of ...

New simulations of the asthenosphere find that convective cycling and pressure-driven flow can sometimes cause Earth's most fluid layer of mantle to move even faster than the tectonic plates that ride ...

Our world’s surface is a jumble of jostling tectonic plates, with new ones emerging as others are pulled under. The ongoing cycle keeps our continents in motion and drives life on Earth. But what ...

For decades, the end-stage life of a subduction zone existed only in theory. Now, for the first time in geologic history, scientists are bearing witness to the Juan de Fuca Plate tearing apart and ...

Tectonic plates are constantly in motion — shaping continents, forming mountains, and triggering earthquakes. But what if ...

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. The ...

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." The modern understanding of the plate tectonic cycle predicts that remnants of submerged plates will be ...

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 ...

New seismic data reveals that the Indian tectonic plate is breaking apart deep beneath Tibet, in a phenomenon scientists call ...

The biggest jigsaw puzzle in the solar system has a split personality: The number and sizes of Earth's tectonic plates can flip, according to a new study. Today, the pieces of Earth's broken shell are ...

About 150 million years ago, a massive tectonic mega-plate stretched across the Earth, spanning roughly a quarter of the size of the Pacific Ocean. Its jagged contours ran all the way through the ...