A. The lithospheric breakup-collision coupling system, in which collisional thickening of the continental crust is coupled with lithospheric breakup due to asthenospheric upwelling for active rifting. B. The seafloor spreading-lithospheric subduction coupling system, in which the oceanic slab is subducted to depths of >80–100 km for the gravitational pull, providing far-field stresses for passive rifting. Credit: Science China Press

Plate tectonics in the twenty-first century

A map of the World Ocean Floor. Credit: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division

Geologists take Earth’s inner temperature using erupted sea glass

A Mystery of Form and Structure

Age of blueschist does not indicate the origin of plate tectonics

What Earth was like 4.4 billion years ago?

“Lost continent” found under Mauritius

Researchers developed a technique that allows them to study the atomic arrangements of liquid silicates at the extreme conditions found in the core-mantle boundary. This could lead to a better understanding of the Earth's early molten days, which could even extend to other rocky planets. Credit: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Earth’s evolutionary tale, researchers probe materials at deep-Earth conditions

Tectonic plates ‘weaker than previously thought,’ say scientists

New Curtin University research on the remixing of Earth's stratified deep interior suggests that global plate tectonic processes, which played a pivotal role in the existence of life on Earth, started to operate at least 3.2 billion years ago. Credit: Professor Zheng-Xiang Li

Remixed mantle suggests early start of plate tectonics

North american plate shattered speed records a billion years ago

World’s tectonic plate movement mapped

How did plate tectonics start on Earth?

Location of Upwelling in Earth’s Mantle Discovered to Be Stable

Basalt mit frischen Klinopyroxenen (credit Jonas Tusch)

Sampling the deep graveyard of Earth’s earliest crust

Close encounters of a tidal kind could lead to cracks on...

Geologists discover how Australia’s highest mountain was created

A diagram of the asthenosphere, which aids plate tectonics, where researchers at the UT Austin Jackson School of Geosciences say they detected a global layer of partial melt (shown in speckled red). Credit: Junlin Hua, UT Jackson School of Geosciences

Scientists detect molten rock layer hidden under Earth’s tectonic plates

As part of MISTI-India, Megan Guenther, a junior in EAPS, records field notes about the landscape of the Kohistan-Ladakh region of the Himalayas in northern India. Credit: Craig Martin

Collision course: A geological mystery in the Himalayas

Continents breaking up and getting back together. Image credit: Naeblys / Getty Images

Researchers uncover 2.5 billion years of Earth’s continents breaking up and...

Reading the Earth’s LIPS: Large igneous provinces associated with mid-ocean ridges

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