What Does Sea Floor Spreading Cause
As upwelling of magma continues the plates continue to diverge a process known as seafloor spreading samples collected from the ocean floor show that the age of oceanic crust increases with distance from the spreading centre important evidence in favour of this process.
What does sea floor spreading cause. The motivating force for seafloor spreading ridges is tectonic plate slab pull at subduction zones rather than magma pressure although there is typically. As the plates move apart new material wells up and cools onto the edge of the plates. In this way the rugged volcanic landscape of a mid ocean ridge is created along the plate boundary.
These age data also allow the rate of seafloor spreading to be determined and they show that rates. Seafloor spreading occurs along mid ocean ridges large mountain ranges rising from the ocean floor. As two tectonic plates slowly separate molten material rises up from within the mantle to fill the opening.
Seafloor spreading helps to explain continental drift in the theory of plate tectonics. When oceanic plates diverge tensional stress causes fractures to occur in the lithosphere. 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.