Houchin and his colleagues studied dozens of zircon crystals from the Jack Hills in Western Australia. These are the oldest ...

There are many open questions about how our planet formed 4.55 billion years ago: When did plate tectonics start? When did the Earth's mantle begin to vigorously circulate in a process called ...

Earth’s crust may have gone on the move roughly 3.8 billion years ago. “Earth is actually quite distinct to other planets, in that it has plate tectonics,” says study coauthor Nadja Drabon, a ...

Until recently, researchers believed only one planet in our solar system had plate tectonics: Earth. But in a recent study, Brown University researchers used atmospheric modeling to show that Venus, ...

Scientists have taken a journey back in time to unlock the mysteries of Earth’s early history, using tiny mineral crystals called zircons to study plate tectonics billions of years ago. The research ...

All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. Learn more. Earth’s ...

Early in Earth’s history, the heat left over from the collision that formed the Moon left its surface an ocean of magma. As it cooled, its crust was frequently shattered by massive impacts that ...

The emergence of plate tectonics in the late 1960s led to a paradigm shift from fixism to mobilism of global tectonics, providing a unifying context for the previously disparate disciplines of Earth ...

Ancient plate tectonics in the Archean period differs from modern plate tectonics in the Phanerozoic period because of the higher mantle temperatures inside the early Earth, the thicker basaltic crust ...

Geologists have uncovered the remains of a massive tectonic plate beneath the Pacific Ocean, a plate that had been hidden for over 160 million years. Known as Pontus, this tectonic giant once covered ...

Earth’s surface is constantly shifting, shaped by the slow but powerful movement of tectonic plates. While some plates have persisted for hundreds of millions of years, others have vanished, sinking ...

From continental drift to plate tectonics / Naomi Oreskes -- Stripes on the sea floor / Ron Mason -- Reversals of fortune / Frederick J. Vine -- The zebra pattern / Lawrence W. Morley -- On board the ...