This study is led by Prof. Yong-Fei Zheng at University of Science and Technology of China. It focuses on the development of tectonic processes along convergent plate margins through inspection of ...

Earthquakes and volcanism occur as a result of plate tectonics. The movement of tectonic plates themselves is largely driven by the process known as subduction. The question of how new active ...

The interiors of rocky planets and moons tend to be pretty hot compared with their surfaces. This heat, which can be caused by a number of sources — such as tidal stretching and compression, the ...

All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. Learn more. Earth’s ...

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, ...

Creative destruction: a thinner ocean plate sides under a continental plate, melting and recycling the ocean crust into the Earth’s interior and birthing volcanoes in this illustration of subduction, ...

New data indicating that Earth’s surface broke up about 3.2 billion years ago helps clarify how plate tectonics drove the evolution of complex life. In 2016, the geochemists Jonas Tusch and Carsten ...

This period was anything but boring. There was a time in Earth’s history that was so stable, geologists once called it the Boring Billion. But the fact is, this period was anything but boring. In fact ...