Given that all of the Hawaiian Islands were created by volcanic activity, it is somewhat surprising that only one of the islands possesses any active volcanoes. Why did the volcanoes that built the ...

New finding contradicts previous assumptions about the role of mobile plate tectonics in the development of life on Earth. Moreover, the data suggests that 'when we're looking for exoplanets that ...

There may be more habitable planets in the universe than we previously thought, according to geoscientists, who suggest that plate tectonics -- long assumed to be a requirement for suitable conditions ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. The grinding of giant chunks of Earth's outer layer — responsible for burping volcanoes, crushing ...

Scientists are constantly on a mission to untangle how Earth alone among the planets was able to evolve complex life. We know that Earth's past internal movements of the tectonic plates under our feet ...

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 ...

The emergence of plate tectonics is arguably Earth's defining moment, the authors of a new Nature paper write. Out of all the planets we’ve looked at carefully, Earth is the only one that has a hard ...

The Solar System is ancient. Many of the bodies in it show their age with impacts that date back to the violent early days of the Late Heavy Bombardment and craters embedded in craters. Earth is ...

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 ...

Asteroid impacts may have triggered the first seismic shifts on Earth more than four billion years ago. It was previously believed that the planet was too hot to sustain plate tectonics during the ...