The Earth is just too unusual a place, they insisted, with its stable orbit, nearby moon, watery surface, plate tectonics and unique position in the galaxy.

FORBES: We've Got Company

What's more, a machine-made surface produces the wrong kind of friction: to do its job precisely, the plate's surface needs minute scorings, of only a few microns each, where machine oil can reside.

CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia | GizmoLand! | Man Beats Machine

Most photomasks are created by etching away a thin film of light-blocking chrome from the surface of a quartz plate.

FORBES: Trick of the Light

The result was to convert the surface of a glass plate into the shape of a spiral staircase with 16 steps.

ECONOMIST: A way to detect Earth-sized planets around other stars

It also gave us plate tectonics, which continuously renews and rumples the surface.

FORBES: Magazine Article

The rock occurs some 20km or more down, although in areas where plate tectonics have forced up some of the mantle, peridotite reaches the surface.

ECONOMIST: Greenhouse gases

As the Australian plate sinks, it melts, and some of the magma thus produced erupts violently to the surface.

ECONOMIST: A capricious volcano, but fears ease of another Pompeii

Geological processes, such as plate tectonics, erupting volcanoes, advancing glaciers and river networks, have altered Earth's surface over billions of years.

MSN: Saturn's moon Titan may have seen Earth-like erosion

She takes her visit to the Galapagos, for example, as the starting point for an explanation of plate tectonics (the itchy movements of the various plates that comprise the earth's ever-shifting surface) that created these islands.

ECONOMIST: Island life