At some point between 300 million and 1 billion years ago, a large cosmic object smashed into the planet Venus, leaving a crater more than 170 miles in diameter. A team of Brown University researchers ...

The Earth's outer layer is broken into moving, interacting plates whose motion at the surface generates most earthquakes, creates volcanoes and builds mountains. In this image, the orange layer ...

There are 35 large Archean cratons around the world that form the geologic core of tectonic plates. Because they’re located at the interior of plates, these landmasses often remain unaltered over the ...

Plate divergence is a tectonic phenomenon in which lithospheric plates move apart along divergent plate boundaries, driven primarily by mantle convection, slab pull, and ridge push forces. This ...

About 56 million years ago, Europe and North America began pulling apart to form what became the ever-expanding North Atlantic Ocean. Vast amounts of molten rock from Earth's mantle reached the ocean ...

A study of a giant impact crater on Venus suggests that its lithosphere was too thick to have had Earth-like plate tectonics, at least for much of the past billion years. At some point between 300 ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- At some point between 300 million and 1 billion years ago, a large cosmic object smashed into the planet Venus, leaving a crater more than 170 miles in diameter.