Earthquakes and volcanism occur as a result of plate tectonics. The movement of tectonic plates themselves is largely driven by the process known as subduction. The question of how new active ...

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 ...

A chain of remote islands and underwater volcanoes between Alaska and Kamchatka has revealed a much older chapter in Earth's tectonic history than previously known. Along the Aleutian Arc, the Pacific ...

(a) Geological units and earthquake distribution of an oceanic subduction zone. The orange shadow beneath the volcanic arc represents partially molten areas and magma channels. (b) Thermal structure ...

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge in Iceland. This area is the boundary between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, which move apart ~ 2.5 cm/year over millennia. When plate tectonics first emerged ...

Subduction zones, where one tectonic plate dives underneath another, drive the world’s most devastating earthquakes and tsunamis. How do these danger zones come to be? A study in Geology presents ...

A new study from scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and the University of Chicago sheds light on a hotly contested debate in Earth sciences: when did plate subduction ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. David Bressan is a geologist who covers curiosities about Earth. Oct 29, 2025, 03:16pm EDT Nov 01, 2025, 01:11pm EDT For the first ...

A groundbreaking study in Science Advances reveals that Earth's tectonic plates are breaking apart under the Cascadia subduction zone. Geologists from Louisiana State University and the Lamont-Doherty ...