Plate tectonics is the theory that Earth's outer ... Earth if you could see it 225 million years ago. Back then, all the major continents formed one giant supercontinent, called Pangaea.

4 min read There are a few handfuls of major plates and dozens of ... These convergent boundaries also occur where a plate of ocean dives, in a process called subduction, under a landmass.

Plate tectonics give Earth its mountains, earthquakes, continental drift and maybe even helped give rise to life itself. But ...

Earthquakes are among the most devastating natural disasters, capable of causing significant damage and loss of life. From 1990 to 2024, several countries have experienced a high number of major ...

At divergent boundaries, plates move away from each other and form mid-ocean ridges or major rift zones, and at strike-slip boundaries plates slide past each other.

Although these earthquakes are much less common, they are due to the same forces that cause earthquakes along plate boundaries. Faults are defined by the kind of motion that happens where they are.

But far away from these plate boundaries, at the center of oceanic ... "Sending research vessels to collect data is a major effort," Gün says. "So, in fact, we're hopeful our paper brings some ...