Our planet has an outer layer made up of several plates, which move relative to one another. While we may take this knowledge for granted, this theory of plate tectonics was only formulated in the ...

Using information from inside the rocks on Earth’s surface, my colleagues and I have reconstructed the plate tectonics of the planet over the last 1.8 billion years. It is the first time Earth’s ...

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New Zealand researchers have developed the clearest picture yet of what happens at the base of tectonic plates and how they move across Earth’s surface. For the first time, an international team of ...

Plate boundaries are where the action is. A large fraction of all earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and mountain building occurs at plate boundaries. It is also where most of the people on Earth live.

The solid ground that we all live on forms a thin crust around the Earth. It’s no more than 50km thick - and it’s just the upper part of the lithosphere. Below it is the upper mantle. It’s mostly ...