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 ...

Learn about the movement of tectonic plates off the coast of northern California, a process that could incite major ...

A hidden chunk of an ancient tectonic plate is stuck to the Pacific Ocean floor and sliding under North America, complicating ...

An enduring question in geology is when Earth’s tectonic plates began pushing and pulling in a process that helped the planet evolve and shaped its continents into the ones that exist today. Some ...

We won’t feel it in our lifetime ...

LOGAN, UTAH, USA - Renaissance polymath Leonard da Vinci demonstrated frictional forces slow down the motion of surfaces in contact. Friction, he determined, is proportional to normal force. When two ...

Tremors beneath Northern California show hidden plate movement, helping scientists better understand where future big ...

A new study carried out on the floor of Pacific Ocean provides the most detailed view yet of how the earth’s mantle flows beneath the ocean’s tectonic plates. The findings, published in the journal ...

Memorizing seven continents feels settled, like learning the alphabet. A new study argues the ground rules are less tidy.

Earth’s crust looks solid from the surface, but it is broken into a shifting mosaic of slabs that slowly rearrange oceans and continents. Understanding how those tectonic plates first formed is one of ...

Invisible earthquakes are revealing a hidden tectonic puzzle beneath California’s most dangerous fault zone.

From space, the Iberian Peninsula – primarily occupied by Spain and Portugal – looks like an immovable solid block of land anchoring southwestern Europe. But beneath that apparent stability, the ...