Below the lithosphere is the asthenosphere — a viscous layer kept malleable by heat deep within the Earth. It lubricates the undersides of Earth's tectonic plates, allowing the lithosphere to move.

One discovery that ought to be on everyone's rundown is plate tectonics - the description of how the rigid outer shell of our planet (its lithosphere) moves and is recycled. The theory celebrates ...

Cratons are believed to be the longest-lived regions of the Earth, but a new study shows how dynamic processes can cause their eventual disintegration.

Plate tectonics is a theory that explains how Earth’s lithosphere—its upper mantle and crust—is split into sections called plates, which move. These movements create mountains, volcanoes and ...

When plumes of magma well up through Earth's lithosphere, they create volcanoes, islands, seamounts, and other features on ...

At divergent boundaries, plates move away from each other and ... method 5 to measure the electrical resistivity of the region's lithosphere with naturally occurring radio waves.

Commenting on the geological development, Ken Macdonald, a marine geophysicist and a professor based at the University of ...

Both life and geological processes get their start in the Archaean era amidst a brew of atmospheric gases that probably includes methane and ammonia but little or no free oxygen. As Earth cools, a ...

Cratons are fascinating yet enigmatic geological formations. Known to be relatively stable portions of the Earth's ...

The plates make up Earth's outer shell, called the lithosphere. (This includes the crust and uppermost part of the mantle.) Churning currents in the molten rocks below propel them along like a ...

One of the more stable formations of rock are land masses known as cratons, which contain old “roots” within the lithosphere ...