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Spreading rate is the rate at which an ocean basin widens due to seafloor spreading. (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). Spreading rates determine if the ridge is fast, intermediate, or slow.
Harry Hess proposed the seafloor spreading hypothesis in 1960 (published in 1962 [1]); the term "spreading of the seafloor" was introduced by geophysicist Robert S. Dietz in 1961. [2] According to Hess, seafloor was created at mid-oceanic ridges by the convection of the Earth's mantle, pushing and spreading the older crust away from the ridge. [3]
Seafloor spreading on mid-ocean ridges is a global scale ion-exchange system. [37] Hydrothermal vents at spreading centers introduce various amounts of iron, sulfur, manganese, silicon, and other elements into the ocean, some of which are recycled into the ocean crust.
The creation of sheeted dykes is a perpetual and continuous process that promotes the phenomenon known as seafloor spreading. [6] Seafloor spreading is the creation of new oceanic crust by volcanic activity at mid-ocean ridges, and as magma continues to rise and solidify at mid-ocean ridges, the existing older dykes are pushed out of the way to ...
The seabed (also known as the seafloor, sea floor, ocean floor, and ocean bottom) is the bottom of the ocean. All floors of the ocean are known as 'seabeds'. The structure of the seabed of the global ocean is governed by plate tectonics. Most of the ocean is very deep, where the seabed is known as the abyssal plain. Seafloor spreading creates ...
Marine geological studies were of extreme importance in providing the critical evidence for sea floor spreading and plate tectonics in the years following World War II. The deep ocean floor is the last essentially unexplored frontier and detailed mapping in support of economic ( petroleum and metal mining ), natural disaster mitigation, and ...
Apparent polar wander paths provided the first clear geophysical evidence for continental drift, while marine magnetic anomalies did the same for seafloor spreading. Paleomagnetic data continues to extend the history of plate tectonics back in time, constraining the ancient position and movement of continents and continental fragments ( terranes ).
Marine sediment, or ocean sediment, or seafloor sediment, are deposits of insoluble particles that have accumulated on the seafloor.These particles either have their origins in soil and rocks and have been transported from the land to the sea, mainly by rivers but also by dust carried by wind and by the flow of glaciers into the sea, or they are biogenic deposits from marine organisms or from ...