Scientists have produced the first global map and analysis of small mare ridges (SMRs) on the moon, a characteristic ...

Great things can come from failure when it comes to geology. The Midcontinent rift formed about 1.1 billion years ago and ...

With less water in the lakes, especially Lake Turkana, it has become easier for the great rift beneath to move.

An earthquake-generating chunk of tectonic plate has been discovered beneath Northern California. It’s attached to the bottom of the North American plate like gum stuck to a shoe. Using abundant, tiny ...

The Mendocino Triple Junction off the coast of Northern California is the point where three tectonic plates meet. A new study reveals at least five moving pieces deep below the Earth's surface make up ...

This piece is part of a special project on deep time examining what the Western U.S. was like thousands, millions and even billions of years ago, and how that history is still visible and ...

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 ...

For decades, the end-stage life of a subduction zone existed only in theory. Now, for the first time in geologic history, scientists are bearing witness to the Juan de Fuca Plate tearing apart and ...

My father once said, “Wouldn’t it be great if they could find a way to split water easily?” He was a chemical engineer who disdained waste and pollution and was keenly aware of how clean hydrogen ...

For decades, scientists have grappled with a profound question known as the Fermi Paradox: if the galaxy is teeming with the potential for extraterrestrial life, why is the cosmos so quiet? A new ...

Rocks in Australia preserve evidence that plates in Earth’s crust were moving 3.5 billion years ago, a finding that pushes back the beginnings of plate tectonics by hundreds of millions of years.

Subduction zones, where one tectonic plate dives underneath another, drive the world’s most devastating earthquakes and tsunamis. How do these danger zones come to be? A study in Geology presents ...