The audience was stunned. Atwater was the first person to use the newly revealed secrets of the seafloor to explain a ...

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, ...

Emerging evidence suggests that plate tectonics, or the recycling of Earth's crust, may have begun much earlier than previously thought — and may be a big reason that our planet harbors life. When you ...

Earth’s plate tectonics could be a passing phase. After simulating rock and heat flow throughout a planet’s lifetime, researchers have proposed that plate tectonics is just one stage of a planet’s ...

Earth's surface is broken up into large plates that rub against each other, causing earthquakes, volcanoes and large mountain ranges. But how unique is our planet's geology? When you purchase through ...

The research reveals how one of Earth’s defining geologic features likely formed — and set the stage for the emergence of life Abigail Eisenstadt Zircons are the oldest minerals in the world and come ...

Scientists studying rocks in South Africa report evidence for the earliest known earthquake triggered by plate tectonics. The temblor struck more than 3 billion years ago. The rocks preserve telltale ...

What would you put on your list of the great scientific breakthroughs of the 20th Century? General relativity? Quantum mechanics? Something to do with genetics, perhaps? One discovery that ought to be ...

A new study makes the case that the solar system’s hellish second planet once may have had plate tectonics that could have made it more hospitable to life. By Kenneth Chang Venus today is not like ...

From a distance, it’s not obvious that Earth is full of life. You have to get pretty close to see the biggest forests, and closer still to see the work of humans, let alone microbes. Nevertheless, ...