What Causes The Ocean Floor To Spread

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.

What causes the ocean floor to spread.

Seafloor spreading happens at the bottom of an ocean as tectonic plates move apart. The process by which the ocean floor sinks into the mantle is known as. 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. They move as they.

For instance the atlantic ocean is believed to be expanding because of its few trenches. Spreading rates determine if the ridge is fast intermediate or slow. Float on top of the asthenosphere. The magnetism of mid ocean ridges helped scientists first identify the process of seafloor spreading in the early 20th century.

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. What causes the ocean floor to spread. Plates move move together apart or past each other. In places where plates move apart magma.

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. Gravity causes older denser oceanic crust to sink beneath less dense continental crust. 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. Huge plates of rock.

The lithosphere is made of. At ridges in the middle of oceans new oceanic crust is created. 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. Subduction and sea floor spreading are processes that could alter the size and form of the ocean.

A chain of underwater mountains along which sea floor spreading occurs is a. The seafloor moves and carries continents with it. The ocean floor i spreading at a rate.