What is the primary force that cause the seafloor to spread?
Thermal convection
What causes the sea floor to spread?
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.
What is the first step of seafloor spreading?
The first step in the seafloor spreading comes in the form of cracking up of the oceanic crust. The convection currents manage to push huge amounts of magma under very high pressure and the crust breaks up.
What is one piece of evidence of seafloor spreading?
There is lots of evidence that proves that seafloor spreading is occurring. One piece of evidence is mid-ocean ridges. Rocks found near mid-ocean ridges are young and get older as the distance from the ocean ridge increases.
Where is the rock on the seafloor the youngest the oldest?
mid-ocean ridges
Where is the oldest land on earth?
Australia holds the oldest continental crust on Earth, researchers have confirmed, hills some 4.4 billion years old.
Why isnt the ocean floor older?
Most oceanic crust is less than 200 million years old, because it is typically recycled back into the Earth’s mantle at subduction zones (where two tectonic plates collide). But a new study shows that part of the eastern Mediterranean Sea may contain the oldest known oceanic crust.
How old would the oldest Seafloors be that we find on Earth?
approximately 280 million years old
What is the youngest ocean?
The Atlantic Ocean
What is the youngest ocean floor?
[Check Answer] The youngest ocean floor is located on the mid-ocean ridge. Where is the oldest ocean floor located? [Check Answer] The oldest ocean floor is located near the continents, next to a subduction zone.
How old is the crust?
The average age of the current Earth’s continental crust has been estimated to be about 2.0 billion years. Most crustal rocks formed before 2.5 billion years ago are located in cratons.
Where is Earth’s crust the thinnest?
The crust is made up of the continents and the ocean floor. The crust is thickest under high mountains and thinnest beneath the ocean.
What is the oldest known rock on Earth?
Bedrock in Canada is 4.28 billion years old Bedrock along the northeast coast of Hudson Bay, Canada, has the oldest rock on Earth. Earth’s oldest known rock is composed of the mineral amphibole, which contains abundant garnet, seen as large round “spots” in the rock.