What Causes The Ocean Floor To Spread

The magnetism of mid ocean ridges helped scientists first identify the process of seafloor spreading in the early 20th century.

What causes the ocean floor to spread.

It causes what we call sea floor spreading sea floor spreading is the process in which the ocean floor is extended when two plates move apart. Basalt the once molten rock that makes up most new oceanic crust is a fairly magnetic substance and scientists began using magnetometers to measure the magnetism of the ocean floor in the 1950s what they discovered was that the magnetism of the ocean floor around. Gravity causes older denser oceanic crust to sink beneath less dense continental crust. This spreading creates a successively younger ocean floor and the flow of material is thought to bring about the migration or drifting apart of the continents.

Huge plates of rock. They move as they. The ocean floor i spreading at a rate. Spreading rate is the rate at which an ocean basin widens due to seafloor spreading.

The lithosphere is made of. The seafloor moves and carries continents with it. For instance the atlantic ocean is believed to be expanding because of its few trenches. The rate at which new oceanic lithosphere is added to each tectonic plate on either side of a mid ocean ridge is the spreading half rate and is equal to half of the spreading rate.

At ridges in the middle of oceans new oceanic crust is created. The east pacific rise is a mid oceanic ridge a divergent tectonic plate boundary located along the floor of the pacific ocean it separates the pacific plate to the west from north to south the north american plate the rivera plate the cocos plate the nazca plate and the antarctic plate it runs south from the gulf of california in the salton sea basin in southern california to a point. Due to this continuous seafloor spreading occurs and makes atlantic ocean floor to be connected to other continental crust making the ocean gets wider over the time. Subduction and sea floor spreading are processes that could alter the size and form of the ocean.

The continents bordering the atlantic ocean for example are believed to be moving away from the mid atlantic ridge at a rate of 1 2 cm 0 4 0 8 inch per year thus increasing. Spreading rates determine if the ridge is fast intermediate or slow. The motivating force for seafloor spreading ridges is tectonic plate pull rather than magma pressure although there is typically significant magma activity at spreading ridges. Seafloor spreading happens at the bottom of an ocean as tectonic plates move apart.

Plates move move together apart or past each other. Float on top of the asthenosphere. In places where plates move apart magma.