You've probably seen stunning images of the night side of the Earth from space. Most people have seen the veritable constellations of city lights scattered familiarly across the continents, separated ...

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 ...

The Earth is made of different layers: the core, mantle and crust. Plate tectonic theory shows that the crust of the Earth is split into plates (pieces of the Earth’s crust). The movement of these ...

According to plate tectonic theory, the Earth’s surface is made up of slabs of rock that are slowly shifting right under our feet. Because of this constant movement, today’s Earth looks a lot ...

What would you put on your list of the great scientific breakthroughs of the 20th Century? General relativity? Quantum mechanics? Something to do with genetics, perhaps? One discovery that ought to be ...

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 ...

Plate tectonics is the theory that Earth's outer layer is made up of plates, which have moved throughout Earth's history. The theory explains the how and why behind mountains, volcanoes, and ...

Some great ideas shake up the world. For centuries, the outermost layer of Earth was thought to be static, rigid, locked in place. But the theory of plate tectonics has rocked this picture of the ...