What is the main reason that magma forms during seafloor spreading at oceanic ridges?

What is the main reason that magma forms during seafloor spreading at oceanic ridges?

Seafloor spreading is the process by which new oceanic lithosphere forms at mid-ocean ridges. As tectonic plates move away from each other, magma rises from Earth’s interior. It then cools and solidifies in the center of the ridge. The rising magma pushes up between the plates and drives them further apart.

How does seafloor spreading happen?

Seafloor spreading occurs at divergent plate boundaries. As tectonic plates slowly move away from each other, heat from the mantle’s convection currents makes the crust more plastic and less dense. The less-dense material rises, often forming a mountain or elevated area of the seafloor. Eventually, the crust cracks.

What is the theory that explains how new ocean crust is formed at ridges and destroyed at deep sea trenches?

Seafloor spreading
7. Seafloor spreading: Hess’s theory that new ocean crust is formed at mid-ocean ridges and destroyed at deep-sea trenches; occurs in a continuous cycle of magma intrusion and spreading.

How does seafloor spreading occur in the mid-ocean ridge?

Sea-floor spreading is what happens at the mid-oceanic ridge where a divergent boundary is causing two plates to move away from one another resulting in spreading of the sea floor. As the plates move apart, new material wells up and cools onto the edge of the plates.

Which of the following is a result of seafloor spreading?

In sea-floor spreading, the sea floor spreads apart along both sides of a mid-ocean ridge as new crust is added. As a result, the ocean floors move like conveyor belts, carrying the continents along with them.

What happens when oceanic crust and continental crust collide?

When an oceanic and a continental plate collide, eventually the oceanic plate is subducted under the continental plate due to the high density of the oceanic plate. Once again a benioff zone forms where there are shallow intermediate and deep focus earthquakes.

What is it called when magma rises and sinks?

This sort of magma production is called spreading center volcanism. At the point where two plates collide, one plate may be pushed under the other plate, so that it sinks into the mantle. This process, called subduction, typically forms a trench, a very deep ditch, usually in the ocean floor.

How does the rate of seafloor spreading affect sea level?

The increased rate of seafloor spreading caused sea level to rise. Increasing the rate of seafloor spreading inflates the ridge. Hot, young lithosphere is forming and moving away from the ridge at a faster rate and moves a greater distance from the ridge before it cools and contracts. So sea level rises.

How seafloor spreads and the evidences supporting this theory?

The theory of seafloor spreading states that new ocean crust is continually being formed, and that this crust is slowly carried away from its point of origin over a period of time. The study of the repeated reversal of the Earth’s magnetic poles over time has provided convincing evidence of seafloor spreading.

How does continental drift and seafloor spreading cause the movement of tectonic plates?

Seafloor spreading helps explain continental drift in the theory of plate tectonics. Plates that are not subducting are driven by gravity sliding off the elevated mid-ocean ridges a process called ridge push. At a spreading center, basaltic magma rises up the fractures and cools on the ocean floor to form new seabed.

How is the spreading of the seafloor a geologic process?

Seafloor spreading is a geologic process in which tectonic plates—large slabs of Earth’s lithosphere—split apart from each other. Seafloor spreading and other tectonic activity processes are the result of mantle convection. Term. Part of Speech

How is seafloor spreading related to mantle convection?

Vocabulary Seafloor spreading is a geologic process in which tectonic plate s—large slabs of Earth’s lithosphere —split apart from each other. Seafloor spreading and other tectonic activity processes are the result of mantle convection. Mantle convection is the slow, churn ing motion of Earth’s mantle.

What happens when tectonic plates crash on the seafloor?

Subduction happens where tectonic plates crash into each other instead of spreading apart. At subduction zones, the edge of the denser plate subduct s, or slides, beneath the less-dense one. The denser lithospheric material then melts back into the Earth’s mantle. Seafloor spreading creates new crust.

What kind of features can magma extrusion form?

An intrusion can form features such as dikes and xenoliths. An extrusion could include lava and volcanic rock. Magma can intrude into a low-density area of another geologic formation, such as a sedimentary rock structure. When it cools to solid rock, this intrusion is often called a pluton.