Smoot Sea Floor Is Not Spreading

The process by which new sea floor forms when magma rises to earth s surface at mid ocean ridges and solidifies as older existing sea floor moves away from the ridge.

Smoot sea floor is not spreading. He proposed that the sea floor itself pushing the continents apart. Learn more about sea floor spreading and how it works with this demo. The magnetism of mid ocean ridges helped scientists first identify the process of seafloor spreading in the early 20th century. 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.

The mid ocean ridge is the region where 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. 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. The concept of sea floor spreading was first proposed by professor herry hess in 1960.

The oceanic crust is composed of rocks that move away from the ridge as new crust is being formed. Continental shelf 300 feet continental slope 300 10 000 feet abyssal plain 10 000 feet abyssal hill 3 000 feet up from the abyssal plain seamount 6 000 feet. The smooth flat regions that make up 40 of the ocean floor are the abyssal plain. Spreading rates determine if the ridge is fast intermediate or slow.

Spreading rate is the rate at which an ocean basin widens due to seafloor spreading. The sea floor then drops off steeply along the continental slope the true edge of the continent. The following features are shown at example depths to scale though each feature has a considerable range at which it may occur. The process of sea floor spreading.

The theory that explains how large pieces of earth s outermost layer called tectonic plates move and change shape. The formation of the new crust is due to the rising of the molten material magma from the mantle by convection current. The ridges he thought where new sea floor is being added to the earth s lithosphere which in turn to push the continents apart he termed it sea floor spreading. Look at figure 14 23.

If you follow the ocean floor out from the beach at the top left the seafloor gently slopes along the continental shelf.