THAT AUTUMN, A RESEARCH VESSEL called the Glomar Challenger sailed over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge to drill holes and sample sediment. Fossils within the sediment samples they retrieved gave scientists a ...

Scientists warn that the plate beneath Gibraltar arc will begin to shift toward the Atlantic within 20 million years.

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 ...

A new study presented at the 2025 EPSC/DPS Joint Meeting proposes that the rarity of specific geological and atmospheric conditions necessary for technologically advanced life significantly limits the ...

A new study published in Nature Geoscience, by researchers from IDL – Instituto Dom Luiz, at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, has gathered seismic evidence that could explain a ...

A plume of molten rock rising from the depths of the Earth in heartbeat-like pulses is slowly tearing Africa apart—and will one day create a new ocean. This is the conclusion of an international team ...

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 ...

Things may be moving on Venus’ surface. In 1983, researchers discovered that the planet’s surface was speckled with strange, circular landforms. These rounded mountain belts, known as coronae, have no ...

Earth is the only known planet which has plate tectonics today. The constant movement of these giant slabs of rock over the planet’s magma creates continents – and may have even helped create life. In ...