In a new study, a team of researchers suggests that 4 billion years ago, plate tectonics likely looked closer to what we experience today than previously thought. The team published its findings in ...

This is the story of how the world travels of a 19th century explorer, two bar magnets and the World War II hunt for enemy submarines led to the invention of the portable fluxgate magnetometer. And ...

Computer simulations suggest that a collision with another planetary object early in Earth’s history may have provided the heat to set off plate tectonics. By Lucas Joel Some 4.5 billion years ago, ...

For millions of years, Earth’s shifting plates have shaped continents, formed oceans, and built towering mountain ranges. But some of these colossal structures have vanished into the depths of the ...

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 ...

Modern plate tectonics may have gotten under way as early as 3.2 billion years ago, about 400 million years earlier than scientists thought. That, in turn, suggests that the movement of large pieces ...

Earth's unique possession of both abundant internal heat and liquid water facilitates active plate tectonics, a process absent on other terrestrial planets. Mars, smaller than Earth, cooled rapidly, ...

With tectonic plates bumping and grinding against each other, Earth is a pretty active planet. But when did this activity begin? A new study from Yale University claims to have found evidence that ...

The closest technological species to us in the Milky Way galaxy could be 33,000 light years away and their civilization would have to be at least 280,000 years, and possibly millions of years, old if ...