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.

Map of Earth's principal tectonic plates. Earth's lithosphere. Major and minor plates. arrows indicate direction of movement at plate boundaries. Vector illustration. Billions of years ago, Earth's ...

The King's Trough Complex is a several-hundred-kilometer-long, canyon-like system of trenches on the North Atlantic seafloor.

The first ruptures in early Earth’s skin formed because of the weakness of rock minerals merely a millimeter wide, two scientists propose. The small minerals’ behavior created boundaries defining ...

Plate tectonics is the theory used to explain the structure of the Earth’s crust and many of the associated phenomenon. The rigid lithosphere is split into 15 major plates that slowly move on top of ...

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 ...

The outer layer of modern Earth is a collection of interlocking rigid plates, as seen in this illustration. These plates grind together, sliding past or dipping beneath one another, giving rise to ...

To learn why, where, and how earthquakes happen, you need to familiarize your students with the interior of the Earth and a model called plate tectonics. The engine behind the earthquake machine is ...

The Earth's plates jostle about in fits and starts that are punctuated with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. 4 min read There are a few handfuls of major plates and dozens of smaller, or minor, ...

Geoscientists have discovered a new process in plate tectonics which shows that tremendous damage occurs to areas of Earth's crust long before it should be geologically altered by known plate-boundary ...