Scientists discovered plate anomalies in Earth's mantle using seismic wave analysis. These mysterious structures challenge tectonic theories.

An earthquake-generating chunk of tectonic plate has been discovered beneath Northern California. It’s attached to the bottom of the North American plate like gum stuck to a shoe. Using abundant, tiny ...

The tectonic plates are among the most powerful forces on Earth, exerting tremendous influence over every single life that unfolds on this planet. They are both creators and destroyers, capable of ...

Robert Krut grew up devouring books by Raymond Carver and the Beat Poets, heavily influenced by the short story writer’s sparse prose and the latters’ collective bent toward romantic fearlessness. To ...

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Earth is fortunate in having a magnetic field: it protects the planet and its life from harmful cosmic radiation. Other planets in our solar system—such as Mars—are constantly bombarded by charged ...

Rocks in Australia preserve evidence that plates in Earth’s crust were moving 3.5 billion years ago, a finding that pushes back the beginnings of plate tectonics by hundreds of millions of years.

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 ...

Since 1980, California’s passenger car license plates have followed the same format: one number, three letters, and three numbers (think 1ABC234). But that tried-and-true combo is at the end of its ...

Seismic waves from earthquakes have always offered a window into Earth’s hidden interior. For decades, researchers believed they had a firm grasp on how these waves revealed the rocky mantle’s secrets ...

New findings provide a greater understanding of plate subduction, or how tectonic plates slide beneath one another. This recycling of surface materials and volatile elements deep into the Earth's ...

Venus could have a churning crust that explains its massive number of volcanoes, a new theory with big implications for planetary science. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Peter Rubin Venus may be far more ...