This is because of plate tectonics. ... where the Caribbean Plate is slowly sliding underneath Puerto Rico. RELATED: Monday's earthquake was likely an aftershock from the 2011 Virginia quake ...

It lies on the boundary of the Nazca and South American tectonic plates. ... The jerking movement of a sliding plate causes a release of energy, some of which shudders through the crust, ...

An active system of plate tectonics could also explain two puzzling facts about Europa, Kattenhorn said: 1) why its surface is so young (less than 90 million years, as estimated by meteorite ...

Plate tectonics is the widely accepted theory that the Earth's crust is divided into several sections that float around on the mantle — the mostly solid layer between the core and the crust.

Just south of Alaska, the Pacific plate is sliding underneath the North American plate, an area called the subduction zone. That’s why the state is highly seismic, Blakeman tells The Verge .

The 8.7 magnitude quake, followed by a 8.2 magnitude aftershock, could signal the formation of a new plate boundary under the Earth. While not the largest earthquakes ever recorded, the two quakes ...