New Sea Floor Forming

The formation of the new crust is due to the rising of the molten material magma from the mantle by convection current.

New sea floor forming. The thinking is that the red sea will eventually pour into the new sea in a million years or so. Scientists have thought that magmas that form new crust at fast spreading ridges rise up from the depths quickly crystallize and then push away from the ridge to form new ocean floor. Divergent boundaries constructive occur where two plates slide apart from each other. Since the new oceanic basins are shallower than the old oceanic basins the total capacity of the world s ocean basins decreases during times of active sea floor spreading.

The magnetism of mid ocean ridges helped scientists first identify the process of seafloor spreading in the early 20th century. As the plates move further apart new ocean lithosphere is formed at the ridge and the ocean basin gets wider. At zones of ocean to ocean rifting divergent boundaries form by seafloor spreading allowing for the formation of new ocean basin as the ocean plate splits the ridge forms at the spreading center the ocean basin expands and finally the plate area increases causing many small volcanoes and or shallow. Transform boundaries are faults that connect two areas where plates are converging or diverging.

The edges of these continental boundaries usually form zig zag patterns. The oceanic crust is composed of rocks that move away from the ridge as new crust is being formed. The mid ocean ridge is the region where new oceanic crust is created. During the opening of the atlantic ocean sea level was so high that a western interior seaway formed across north america from the gulf of mexico to the arctic ocean.

The new ocean would connect to the red sea and the gulf of aden an arm of the arabian sea between. Where plates diverge from each other molten magma flows upward between the plates forming mid ocean ridges underwater volcanoes hydrothermal vents and new ocean floor crust. This process known as sea floor spreading is happening at an average rate of. The farther away the floor is from the boundary the older it is.

A divergent boundary occurs when two tectonic plates move away from each other. 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. Along these boundaries earthquakes are common and magma molten.