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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Venus, a scorching wasteland of a planet according to scientists, may have once had tectonic plate movements similar to those believed to have occurred on early Earth, a new study found. PROVIDENCE, R ...

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 ...

Anyone who has hovered over a jigsaw puzzle for hours knows that sometimes you can’t figure out how two pieces fit together until you’ve placed all the pieces around them. The same holds true for ...

W. Jason Morgan, a Princeton University geologist who laid out an influential new vision of our evolving planet, attributing the most powerful upheavals — earthquakes, volcanoes and the formation of ...

A hidden shard of ancient crust has been detected where California’s San Andreas system collides with the Cascadia subduction zone, reshaping how I understand the tectonic engine of the West Coast.

Venus, may have once had tectonic plate movements similar to those believed to have occurred on early Earth, a new study found. The finding sets up tantalizing scenarios regarding the possibility of ...