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.

Scientists have discovered a long hidden plate boundary near the east coast of Africa that dates back about 180 million years ...

It’s right there in the name: “plate tectonics.” Geology’s organizing theory hinges on plates—thin, interlocking pieces of Earth’s rocky skin. Plates’ movements explain earthquakes, volcanoes, ...

Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci demonstrated frictional forces slow down the motion of surfaces in contact. Friction, he determined, is proportional to normal force. When two objects are ...

A unique rock formation in China holds clues that tectonic plates subducted, or went underneath other plates, during the Archean eon (4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago), just as they do nowadays, a ...

Along submarine mountain ranges, the mid-ocean ridges, forces from the Earth's interior push tectonic plates apart, forming new ocean floor and thus moving continents about. However, many features of ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. Are we alone, and if so, why? So far, the search for ...

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, ...

The Earth’s crust is constantly changing. It’s currently made of many huge rock slabs called tectonic plates—seven major ones along with many more smaller plates—that fit together like puzzle pieces ...

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 ...