Our planet isn’t the solid hunk of rock it appears to be. It is a shifting, boiling, sliding, sinking, churning ball of superheated magma with a thin, brittle skin. This skin, called the lithosphere, is fractured into 15 large and small segments called tectonic plates. The deep, molten seas of Earth’s mantle are home to giant convection currents that push magma upward and outward.
The tectonic plates float atop these vast subterranean currents, bumping and grinding against each other as they jostle for position. As they move around they forge cascading mountain ranges, deep oceanic gorges and strings of volcanic islands.
TYPES OF FAULTS