Deep Sea Floor Spreading

The motivating force for seafloor spreading ridges is tectonic plate slab pull at subduction zones rather than magma pressure although there is typically significant magma activity at spreading ridges.

Deep sea floor spreading. As upwelling of magma continues the plates continue to diverge a process known as seafloor spreading. Assuming a constant rate seafloor spreading in this area occurs at a rate of choose one. Scaling the tallest mountain on earth would take you not to mt. First related the symmetrical magnetic patterns in seafloor basalts to sea floor spreading at a mid ocean ridge.

Seafloor spreading helps to explain continental drift in the theory of plate tectonics. The mid atlantic ridge for instance separates the north american plate from the eurasian plate and the south american plate from the african plate. 1 012 5 km per year. Seafloor spreading is a geologic process where there is a gradual addition of new oceanic crust in the ocean floor through a volcanic activity while moving the older rocks away from the mid oceanic ridge.

5 cm per year. Seafloor spreading occurs along mid ocean ridges large mountain ranges rising from the ocean floor. They re not part of the east pacific oceanic ridge. Scientists now know that the oldest crust is coldest and lies deepest in the ocean because it is less buoyant than the hot new crust seafloor spreading is the mechanism for wegener s drifting continents.

These age data also allow the rate of seafloor spreading to be determined and they show that rates vary from about 0 1 cm 0 04 inch per year to 17 cm 6 7 inches per year. If the oceanic crust reaches a deep sea trench it sinks into the trench and is lost into the mantle. On the basis of tharp s efforts and other new discoveries about the deep ocean floor hess postulated that molten material from earth s mantle continuously wells up along the crests of the mid ocean ridges that wind for nearly 80 000 km 50 000 miles through all the world s oceans. 20 000 cm per year.

The mid ocean ridge is where the seafloor spreading occurs in which tectonic plates large slabs of earth s lithosphere split apart from each other. First you will need to get into a deep ocean submersible and dive almost 4 miles under the surface of the pacific ocean to the sea floor. Radiometric dating of a magnetic anomaly stripe of rock that is 225 km away from the mid ocean ridge axis gives an age of 4 5 million years. 50 km per year.

When oceanic plates diverge tensional stress causes fractures to occur in the lithosphere. The volcanoes of hawaii are located above a deep mantle hot spot. The seafloor spreading hypothesis was proposed by the american geophysicist harry h. Linear magnetic patterns associated with mid ocean ridges are configured as.