A seamount sitting on a subducting tectonic plate off the coast of Japan and plowing its way into Earth's mantle may be at the root of several magnitude 7 earthquakes in the past 40 years. When you ...

Scientists have taken a journey back in time to unlock the mysteries of Earth’s early history, using tiny mineral crystals called zircons to study plate tectonics billions of years ago. The research ...

Within the next 30 years, a highly destructive Nankai Trough megathrust earthquake is predicted to hit southwest Japan. Understanding long-term slow slip events that occur along the plate interface ...

When tectonic plates sink into the Earth they look like slinky snakes! That's according to a study published in Nature, which helps answer a long standing question about what happens to tectonic ...

Two overlapping oceanic plates are sinking into the mantle underneath central Japan where they dehydrate, releasing water-rich fluids that enhance mantle melting. Geochemical work helps determine the ...

If you think about mountain ranges like the Andes or the Himalayas, you can come up with multiple factors that must affect their size and shape. There’s the collision of tectonic plates that squeezes ...

Earth’s crust looks solid from the surface, but it is broken into a shifting mosaic of slabs that slowly rearrange oceans and continents. Understanding how those tectonic plates first formed is one of ...

Friday’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake was so powerful that it actually widened Japan. While parts of the country barely moved, other regions are now 13 feet closer to the United States. The earthquake may ...

Within the next 30 years, a highly destructive Nankai Trough megathrust earthquake is predicted to hit southwest Japan. Understanding long-term slow slip events (L-SSE (*1)) that occur along the plate ...