The Earth's outer layer is made up of a series of moving, interacting plates whose motion at the surface generates earthquakes, creates volcanoes and builds mountains. Geoscientists have long sought ...

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The Church publishes the Monitor ...

A geologist has revealed intriguing insights into the volcanic activity on Mars. He proposes that Mars has significantly more diverse volcanism than previously realized, driven by an early form of ...

The Earth's mantle might not always move along in lockstep with the overlying tectonic crust—as set out in science textbooks for decades—but may instead behave differently. This is the conclusion of ...

Plate tectonics, responsible for deadly earthquakes and volcanoes around the globe, may also be a key factor in the success of life as we know it on the third planet, a new study suggests. As the ...

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 ...

At subduction zones, the force of gravity drags dense tectonic plates beneath other, more buoyant plates. As the plates slide past one another, stress builds and is eventually released in the largest ...

It is all thanks to subduction, the process of recycling that sends old oceanic crust back into the mantle. For the Cascades, this is subduction of three very small tectonic plates: the Juan de Fuca, ...

The emergence of plate tectonics is arguably Earth's defining moment, the authors of a new Nature paper write. Out of all the planets we’ve looked at carefully, Earth is the only one that has a hard ...

Earth's continents may look fixed on a globe, but they've been drifting, splitting and reforming over billions of years—and they still are. Our new study reveals fresh evidence of rhythmic pulses of ...