Tectonic plates — which divide Earth’s crust and reshape our planet in an ongoing, dynamic process — may be the key to supporting life. In fact, because Earth is the only planet known to be home to ...

Our planet is in constant flux. Tectonic plates—the large slabs of rock that divide Earth’s crust so that it looks like a cracked eggshell—jostle about in fits and starts that continuously reshape our ...

Far beneath the ocean's surface, where mountain belts rise and ancient oceanic crust lies hidden, a long-lost tectonic plate has been brought back into view. In one of Earth's most tectonically ...

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 ...

A high-resolution map of Mars's entire magnetic field provides new evidence that Earth-like plate tectonics - great crustal plates pulling apart and crashing together - underpin the red planet's ...

Vast, quasi-circular features on Venus’ surface may reveal that the planet has ongoing tectonics, according to new research based on data gathered more than 30 years ago by NASA’s Magellan mission. On ...

Life needs more than water alone. Recent discoveries suggest that plate tectonics has played a critical role in nourishing life on Earth. The findings carry major consequences for the search for life ...

Generally speaking, it’s easy enough to make sense of the last few million years of climate patterns—the world looked much as it does today, so changes in greenhouse gas concentrations or ocean ...