The theory of Plate tectonics – developed from Alfred Wegener’s theory of Continental Drift to explain the movement of the continents – has become the prevailing theory underpinning our understanding ...

The theory of plate tectonics is strikingly recent in scientific history, which was widely accepted in the early 1960's. Now, scientists have discovered an alternative style to plate tectonics and ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The Andes Mountains are much taller than plate tectonic theories predict they should be, a fact that has puzzled geologists for decades. Mountain-building models tend to focus on the ...

If you think about mountain ranges like the Andes or the Himalayas, you can come up with multiple factors that must affect their size and shape. There’s the collision of tectonic plates that squeezes ...

Blacksburg, Va. -- Intense glacial erosion has not only carved the surface of the highest coastal mountain range on earth, the spectacular St. Elias range in Alaska, but has elicited a structural ...

The successful development of sustainable georesources for the energy transition is a key challenge for humankind in the 21st ...

It’s right there in the name: “plate tectonics.” Geology’s organizing theory hinges on plates—thin, interlocking pieces of Earth’s rocky skin. Plates’ movements explain earthquakes, volcanoes, ...

We often affiliate plate tectonics with earthquakes, as we are all taught in school that the shifting of plates leads to big shakes. But plate tectonics serve a far more important job to the planet ...

For hundreds of millions of years, Earth’s climate has warmed and cooled with natural fluctuations in the level of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere. Over the past century, humans have pushed CO₂ ...

There’s no geological artist quite like Earth’s plate tectonics. Thanks to this ongoing operation, we have mountains and oceans, terrifying earthquakes, incandescent volcanic eruptions, and new land ...