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 discovery by Indian and British scientists that the Earth's strong outer shell -- the 'lithosphere' -- within the central Indian Ocean began to deform and fracture 15.4--13.9 million years ago, ...

Yale researchers have proposed a new model to explain the drop in elastic stiffness in the middle of the Earth’s continental lithosphere. Lithosphere is the stiff layer of rock that lies atop the slow ...

We wanted to investigate what happens when continental lithosphere is stretched and broken to form a passive margin, which is a topic of considerable debate. Our idea was to fire compressed air 'shots ...

It is common knowledge that the Earth's rigid upper layer called lithosphere is composed of moving plates. But just what mechanism first set plate tectonics into motion still remains a mystery.

Boulder, Colo., USA: Too deep to see or reach via drilling, the Moho (crust-mantle transition) remains something of a mystery more than a hundred years after its discovery. This insightful, ...

The oceanic lithosphere forms at the summit of ocean ridges during seafloor spreading. Still, the formation of ocean basins is complex, influenced by smaller-scale convection, stagnated pieces of the ...