Define A Ocean Floor Rift

Ocean definition the vast body of salt water that covers almost three fourths of the earth s surface.

Define a ocean floor rift.

Individually ocean ridges are the largest features in ocean basins. As the two active rifts continue to open eventually the. This divergent plate boundary moves apart at a rate of 2 5 cm per year relatively slow for a divergent plate boundary and rises 2 3 km above the ocean floor. Stress orientation of its huge neighbor and has adopted the same rift zone orientation from fiske jackson 1972.

Oliver and bryan l. Mid ocean ridge definition is an elevated region with a central valley on an ocean floor at the boundary between two diverging tectonic plates where new crust forms from upwelling magma. Rift valleys usually form where the earth s lithosphere has become thin through extension associated with plate tectonic processes. Rift valley definition graben.

If spreading continues past the incipient stage described above two of the rift arms will open while the third arm stops opening and becomes a failed rift or aulacogen. A long narrow valley lying between two normal geologic faults. Hess theory was that new seafloor is formed when magma is forced upward toward the surface at a mid ocean ridge. When she inked in and cross hatched the spaces the topographical profile of the north atlantic was evident with mountains and plains and a very obvious mid ocean rift valley indicating continental drift a horrifying concept for geologists to grasp in 1952.

By the late 1960s several american investigators among them jack e. A rift valley is a lowland region that forms where earth s tectonic plates move apart or rift rift valleys are found both on land and at the bottom of the ocean where they are created by the process of seafloor spreading rift valleys differ from river valleys and glacial valleys in that they are created by tectonic activity and not the process of erosion. Collectively the oceanic ridge system is the most prominent feature on earth s surface after the. The ocean floor is thus pushed at right angles and in opposite directions away from the crests.

The most popular mechanism for this outward movement is sliding along the volcano ocean floor interface which consists of easily deformable sediments e g.