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 ...

Scientists have uncovered the oldest direct evidence yet that Earth’s tectonic plates were on the move 3.5 billion years ago. By analyzing magnetic fingerprints in ancient rocks, they reconstructed ...

In 2016, the geochemists Jonas Tusch and Carsten Münker hammered a thousand pounds of rock from the Australian Outback and airfreighted it home to Cologne, Germany. Five years of sawing, crushing, ...

For years, many scientists had thought that plate tectonics existed nowhere in our solar system but on Earth. Now, a UCLA scientist has discovered that the geological phenomenon, which involves the ...

FILE - A girl looks at the moon through a telescope in Caracas, Venezuela, on Sunday, May 15, 2022. The best day to spot five planets, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Uranus and Mars, lined up in the night ...

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. Learn more. Earth’s fractured carapace of rigid, interlocking plates is unique in the solar system. Scientists increasingly ...