When the plate sinks into the mantle it melts to form magma. The pressure of the magma builds up beneath the Earth's surface. The magma escapes through weaknesses in the rock and rises up through a ...

Earth's surface is a turbulent place. Mountains rise, continents merge and split, and earthquakes shake the ground. All of these processes result from plate tectonics, the movement of enormous chunks ...

Ars Technica has been separating the signal from the noise for over 25 years. With our unique combination of technical savvy and wide-ranging interest in the technological arts and sciences, Ars is ...

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 ...

The Euphrates River is the longest river in Western Asia and runs through the eastern side of the Fertile Crescent. Flowing ...

It's one of many unique things about Earth: Unlike every other known planet in the universe, Earth's surface is made up of rigid plates that shift, crash into each other and dive into the planet's ...

The interiors of rocky planets and moons tend to be pretty hot compared with their surfaces. This heat, which can be caused by a number of sources — such as tidal stretching and compression, the ...

Deep beneath the Central African Plateau, something vast is stirring. In Zambia's remote Kafue Rift, hot springs are releasing gases that carry a chemical signature from far below the surface - one ...

A new study makes the case that the solar system’s hellish second planet once may have had plate tectonics that could have made it more hospitable to life. By Kenneth Chang Venus today is not like ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. An aerial view shows the Gwisho hot springs and the southern Kafue Rift fault zone, where researchers say a new continental rift ...

The Earth is made of different layers: the core, mantle and crust. Plate tectonic theory shows that the crust of the Earth is split into plates (pieces of the Earth’s crust). The movement of these ...