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Geography Oceanography, and Weather

Plate Tectonics

What is seafloor spreading?

Seafloor spreading is one of the processes that helps move the lithospheric plates around the world. The process is slow but continuous: Like a hot, bubbling stew on the stove, the even hotter asthenospheric mantle rises to the surface and spreads laterally, transporting oceans and continents as if they were on a slow conveyor belt. This area is usually called a mid-ocean ridge, such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge system in the Atlantic Ocean.

The newly created lithosphere eventually cools as it gets farther from the spreading center. (This is why the oceanic lithosphere is youngest at the midocean ridges and gets progressively older farther away.) As it cools, it becomes more dense. Because of this, it rides lower in the underlying asthenosphere, which is why the oceans are deepest away from the spreading centers and more shallow at the mid-ocean ridges. After thousands to millions of years, the cooled area reaches another plate boundary, either subducting, colliding, or rubbing past another plate. If part of the plate subducts, it will eventually be heated and recycled back into the mantle, rising again in millions of years at another or the same spreading center.



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