Sea Floor Spreading Mid Atlantic Ridge
By the use of the sonar hess was able to map the ocean floor and discovered the mid atlantic ridge mid ocean ridge.
Sea floor spreading mid atlantic ridge. The south atlantic ocean formed by seafloor spreading at the mid atlantic ridge. Geologists can get a rough estimate of the spreading rate i e. Seafloor spreading theory that oceanic crust forms along submarine mountain zones known collectively as the mid ocean ridge system and spreads out laterally away from them. He also found out that the temperature near to the mid atlantic ridge was warmer than the surface away from it.
This idea played a pivotal role in the development of the theory of plate tectonics which revolutionized geologic thought during the last quarter of the 20th century. The dates revealed that the atlantic ocean was opening by seafloor spreading from the mid atlantic ridge at a rate of about 0 02 metres per year. A mid ocean ridge mor is a seafloor mountain system formed by plate tectonics it typically has a depth of 2 600 meters 8 500 ft and rises about two kilometers above the deepest portion of an ocean basin this feature is where seafloor spreading takes place along a divergent plate boundary the rate of seafloor spreading determines the morphology of the crest of the mid ocean ridge and its. This means that north america and europe are moving away from each other at about the rate it takes for your fingernails to grow.
Seafloor spreading was proposed by an american geophysicist harry h.