What Makes the Earth Quake?

Much about the forces at work within the Earth remains unknown. But since the 1960s, geologists have increasingly explained seismic events through "plate tectonics." At the core of this theory is a simple premise--that Earth's seemingly solid surface is actually fractured and adrift.

The Earth's surface consists of a hard shell called the crust, which is broken into large chunks called plates. Plates can hold entire continents (as the North American Plate does) or entire oceans (as the Pacific Plate does). Often, they hold bits of both.

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