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 ...

Tectonic map of the Earth. The first continental crust on Earth formed more than 3 billion years ago. Likely the first fragments formed by partial melting and re-crystallization of the primordial ...

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Researchers have ...

See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. A video of a California woman exploring a place where you can ...

For hundreds of millions of years, Earth’s climate has warmed and cooled with natural fluctuations in the level of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere. Over the past century, humans have pushed CO₂ ...

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 ...

See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. Researchers have produced a new estimate for the origin of Earth's ...

The longstanding enigma of how tectonic plates can break Earth’s rock-hard shell may have been solved by a recent graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin who caught the Earth in the act ...

There’s no geological artist quite like Earth’s plate tectonics. Thanks to this ongoing operation, we have mountains and oceans, terrifying earthquakes, incandescent volcanic eruptions, and new land ...

A new simulation offers a different view of how the continents we live on drifted into their current configuration. By Robin George Andrews Unlike on every other rocky planet in the solar system, ...

The tectonic plates are among the most powerful forces on Earth, exerting tremendous influence over every single life that unfolds on this planet. They are both creators and destroyers, capable of ...