Plate tectonics can trigger ice ages through the production of the carbon-trapping mineral smectite, according to a new study. MIT geologists have found that a clay mineral on the seafloor, called ...

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 ...

The Earth is known for its constant evolution, but it was recently discovered by researchers that there is a trigger that leads to the planet's biodiversity seeing a massive boost, and it is through a ...

For hundreds of millions of years, Earth’s climate has warmed and cooled with natural fluctuations in the level of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere. Over the past century, humans have pushed CO₂ ...

The closest technological species to us in the Milky Way galaxy could be 33,000 light years away and their civilisation would have to be at least 280,000 years, and possibly millions of years, old if ...

One of Earth’s defining features is its plate tectonics, a phenomenon that shapes the planet’s surface and creates some of its most catastrophic events, like earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic ...

A handful of ancient zircon crystals found in South Africa hold the oldest evidence of subduction, a key element of plate tectonics, according to a new study published in the open access journal AGU ...