This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Puerto Rico just can't catch a break. Since ...

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 ...

Geologists report new measurements of rock samples from Kick'em Jenny, a submarine volcano in the Caribbean, that link the rate at which magma is produced beneath subduction zone volcanoes to the rate ...

Carbon released from Earth's spreading tectonic plates, not volcanoes, may have triggered major transitions between ancient ice ages and warm climates, new research finds. Published in Communications ...

The dance of the continents has been reshaping Earth for billions of years, creating the landscapes we walk on today. Scientists are unlocking secrets about how plate tectonics forged our modern world ...

The Andes Mountains are much taller than plate tectonic theories predict they should be, a fact that has puzzled geologists for decades. Mountain-building models tend to focus on the deep-seated ...

Europe and Canada may one day smash into each other if dramatic new research is to be believed. Scientists say one of Earth’s tectonic plates, the massive shelves of crust that carry the continents ...

All in line: "Imaging" the tectonic plate off New Zealand's coast A thin, low-viscosity layer at the base of a tectonic plate has been imaged at a depth of 100 km beneath North Island, New Zealand, by ...

Volcanic eruptions frequently interfere with human affairs; impacts range from minor nuisances to major disasters. Some 50 to 65 different volcanoes typically are active in any given year, and among ...

Schematic tectonic evolution model for the Wutai Complex during Late Archean (a) Subduction setting (~2543 Ma); shows subduction-related metasomatic agents which influenced the lithological and ...