If the plates there continue to diverge, millions of years from now eastern Africa will split from the continent to form a new landmass. A mid-ocean ridge would then mark the boundary between the ...

In the geologic history of Earth, shifting plate tectonics are commonplace, and Africa's impending rift is but another chapter in that story. The Earth's continents are far from constant.

Plate tectonics is the theory that Earth's outer layer is made up of plates, which have moved throughout Earth's history. The theory explains the how and why behind mountains, volcanoes ...

Geologists say that the colossal, 2,000-mile-long fissure slicing through southeastern Africa has been widening by 6-7mm per year. They call this tectonic plate boundary zone the East African Rift ...

In the 1980s, geophysicists discovered what they described as giant blobs of unknown material near Earth's center—one below ...

Scientists have long been puzzled by volcanoes that erupt far from the edges of tectonic plates—known as intraplate volcanoes ...

The chain runs down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean (surfacing at Iceland), around Africa, through the Indian ... At the East Pacific rise, which is pushing a plate into the west coast of South ...

Intraplate volcanism, or volcanism occurring away from plate boundaries, can provide clues ... By contrast, the Indian Ocean, southeast Africa, and the south Atlantic Ocean sit above swaths ...

or two colliding plates can form a mountain belt. At divergent boundaries, plates move away from each other and form mid-ocean ridges or major rift zones, and at strike-slip boundaries plates ...

It has vast water oceans and abundant life. But Earth is also unique because it is the only planet with plate tectonics, which shaped its geology, climate and possibly influenced the evolution of ...

This is called a destructive or convergent plate boundary. When the plates collide, the denser plate, usually the oceanic one, is forced underneath the continental plate. The force of this ...