Sea Floor Spreading And Subduction
As upwelling of magma continues the plates continue to diverge a process known as seafloor spreading.
Sea floor spreading and subduction. The denser lithospheric material then melts back into the earth s mantle. Subduction happens where tectonic plates crash into each other instead of spreading apart. Seafloor spreading is just one part of plate tectonics.
The two processes of seafloor spreading and subduction work together to constantly recycle and renew the earth s crust. Sea floor spreading where new material appears at seams on the sea floor and seems to have moved and is moving to either side can be used by those who are interested in the expanding earth theory as evidence of the earth growing in the past or even now. While new earth is being born at mid ocean ridges by seafloor spreading in other areas earth is being destroyed at deep ocean trenches by subduction.
From the ages of the sea floor and the scale of the model which is the same in the vertical and horizontal directions one can determine that the plate in this model is being subducted at a rate of about 50 km my. This works out to 5 cm y which is within the 1 to 10 cm y range that most plates are moving. The motivating force for seafloor spreading ridges is tectonic plate slab pull at subduction zones rather than magma pressure although there is typically significant magma activity at spreading ridges.
Plates that are not subducting are driven by gravity sliding off the elevated mid ocean ridges a process called ridge push. Tectonic plate subduction is a relatively new geology theory and was is still a bit controversial or seems to have some doubters even in the established world of geology.