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 ...

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 ...

The transition to plate tectonics started with the help of lubricating sediments, scraped by glaciers from the slopes of Earth's first continents, according to new research. Earth's outer layer is ...