The Spreading Of Iceland All Occurs On The Mid Atlantic Ridge

1960- Harry H. Hess came up with idea that the oceanic crust is arranged between the mid ridge and it spread throughout the other ridges.

This lab uses earthquake data to construct profiles of two convergent boundaries: the Tonga Trench and the Peru-Chile Trench. Where two tectonic plates converge, if one or both of the plates is an oceanic lithosphere, a subduction zone will form. When crust is formed at a mid-ocean ridge, it is hot and buoyant meaning it has a low density. As it spreads away from the ridge and cools and contracts, or becomes denser, it is able to sink into the hotter underlying mantle. When two oceanic plates collide, the younger of the two plates, because it is less dense will ride over the edge of the older plate. The density of the

One evidence of this theory is molten material. Molten Material is magma erupting from mid-ocean ridges. Alvin the submarine found weird rocks shaped like pillows or toothpaste. This tells us this magma cools quickly underwater. Another type of evidence are magnetic stripes. Magnetic stripes are patterns in the ocean floor to prove Earth’s magnetic field has reversed itself in history. Scientist also looked at the “magnetic memory” of the rocks. Scientist drilled pipes through water to drill holes into the ocean floor. Scientists discovered that the older rocks were further away and younger rocks were closer. Those were the three types of evidence that scientist used to support the theory of Sea Floor Spreading.

It is believed that this volcanic area was caused by a localised hot spot within the Pacific plate. A concentration of radioactive elements inside of the mantle may have caused this hot spot to develop. The hot spot is stationary so as the Pacific plate moves over it a line of volcanoes are made. This is more proof that the Earth’s crust is moving as suggested by Wegener.

Volcanoes can be found throughout the entire world and are formed when there is a rupture in the mantle of the Earth's crust. This effect allows the output of volcanic lava, ash, and various types of gases. These tectonic plate breaks are normal, the planet Earth is divided into 17 tectonic plates and consistently move against each other forming shifts from low to high intensity. It can cause displacement of earth or water.

The new volcanic material welling up into the void, which forms a ribbon of new materials and breaks down its center gradually, when the plates move apart from the axis of the mid-oceanic ridge system. Therefore, every separating plate accretes one half a ribbon of new lithosphere, and, thus, a new surface is added (Pitman, W.C, 2007). The process is continuous, and separation is always happening at the

Studies of the age of molten rock in the ocean crust confirm the magnetic data. Molten rock contains radioactive isotopes used to calculate the time of the eruption. Rocks near the Mid- Atlantic Ridge, in addition to current like structures happened to be rather young, only some million years aged or a lesser amount (Trefil & Hazen, 2010). Rocks gathered one after another farthest from the range established them to be in turn older. Up to date evidence on charting the surfaces of oceans, maps of rock magnetism, and data on the age of rock indicate to countless expert that the span of the Atlantic Ocean for all intents and purposes is

The youngest oceanic crust is located along the mid-ocean ridges where new crust is formed when the old crust is pushed away from mid – ocean ridges as a result of the seafloor spreading.

8.18 What explains the shrinking of ocean crust as the crust moves away from volcanoes?

The Earth’s outer crust is made up many tectonic plates that move over the surface of the planet. When the plates come collide, volcanoes will form sometime (National Ocean Service). Volcanoes can also form in the middle of a plate, where magma rises upward until it erupts on the sea floor, at what is called a “hot spot” (National Ocean Service). A hot spot is a plume of magma or molten rock that rises from within the Earth then reaches the surface forming underwater volcanoes which may grow tall enough to

However, if you travel away from the ridges you will encounter rocks with reverse polarity and then rocks of normal polarity which are followed by reverse polarity rocks, etc. Vine and Matthews observed that there were symmetrical bands of rocks with similar polarities on each side of every mid-ocean ridge. They hypothesized that the reverse polarized rocks formed at the ridges during the geologic past when the earth's magnetic field had reverse polarization. Their work provided rather elegant proof that the seafloor spreading actually occurs.

Plate tectonics is the scientific theory that attempts to explain the movements of the Earth's lithosphere that have formed the landscape features we see across the globe today” (Briney). Geology defines “plate” as a large slab of solid rock, and “tectonics” is part of the Greek root word for “to build.” Together the words define how the Earth’s surface is built up of moving plates. The theory of plate tectonics dictates that individual plates, broken down into large and small sections of rock, form Earth’s lithosphere. These fragmented bodies of rock move along each other atop the Earth’s liquid lower mantle to create the plate boundaries that have shaped Earth’s landscape. Plate tectonics originated from meteorologist Alfred Wegener’s theory, developed in the early 20th century. In 1912, he realized that the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa appeared to piece together like a jigsaw puzzle. He further examined the globe and deduced that all of Earth’s continents could somehow be assembled together and proposed the idea that the continents had once been linked in a single supercontinent called Pangaea. To explain today’s position of the continents, Wegener theorized that they began to drift apart approximately 300 million years ago. This theory

7. What is the relationship between plate tectonics and the ocean floor—seafloor spreading, for example?

He also used an Austrian geologist’s theory that the continental crust, sial, was lighter than sima and the sial layer could move across the ocean floor (Healey, 2006, para. 15). Wegener further stated that the tides could cause the continents to move and later came to the conclusion that magma could also be responsible for the movement. Wegener made two more journeys to Greenland to conduct meteorological and geophysical studies. His final trek in 1930 included the examination of the glacial sheets to provide further evidence regarding

After World War 2, the U.S. Office of Naval Research intensified efforts in ocean-floor mapping, leading to the discovery of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge to be part of a continous system of mid-oceanic ridges on all ocean floors, prompting Harry H. Hess to suggest the theory of sea-floor spreading. The oldest fossils found in ocean sediments were only 180 million years old and little sediment were accumulated on the ocean floor. Thus, he suggested that seafloors were no more than a few hundred million years old, significantly younger than continental land due to