Elements of a newly discovered process in plate tectonics include a mass (rock slab weight), a pulley (trench), a dashpot (microcontinent), and a string (oceanic plate) that connects these elements to ...

A subduction zone near Cascadia is unraveling piece by piece. The process offers a rare glimpse into how tectonic plates die ...

On present-day Earth, plate subduction continuously modifies the chemical composition of the convecting mantle, and various mantle sources linked to these processes have been widely studied. However, ...

With unprecedented clarity, scientists have directly observed a subduction zone—the collision point where one tectonic plate dives beneath another—actively breaking apart. The discovery, reported in ...

The relationship between the sites means an earthquake in one zone can trigger an earthquake in the other in a phenomenon ...

Every year, earthquakes shake the ground and volcanoes erupt around the edges of tectonic plates—the massive pieces of Earth’s crust that slide slowly across the planet, creating and destroying ...

Earth’s crust may have gone on the move roughly 3.8 billion years ago. “Earth is actually quite distinct to other planets, in that it has plate tectonics,” says study coauthor Nadja Drabon, a ...

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 ...

Long-lost remnants of tectonic plates have been discovered sunken deep inside the Earth's mantle. These plate remains were found lurking underneath the center of other continental plates, far from ...

Geophysicists can use a new model to explain the behavior of a tectonic plate sinking into a subduction zone in the Earth's mantle: the plate becomes weak and thus more deformable when mineral grains ...