Definition of Ocean Ridge

Thedorsal oceanic it's a kind of very common underwater relief which is present at the bottom of the oceans of our planet earth, more precisely in the central part of them. Most of these reliefs, and in the particular case of the oceanic ridge in question, are the result of the activity volcanic or movement of tectonic plates.

So that everyone can get a complete visual idea of ​​the oceanic ridge, we must say that it is a strip of Mountain who knows how to cross the oceans between all the continents of the planet.

The height of a ridge can range between 2,000 and 3,000 meters high and in its center there is a groove, Valley, central pit, called rift, from which magma continually comes out. Due to this fact the rocks in the center are always newer or younger and after a long period of time, millions of years for example, the ocean in question will expand in a proportionate way and simile on both sides of the ridges and then as a consequence the continental masses that are found between that ocean they will inevitably move away, naturally and without being able to stop that clear process this.

So, this rift is undoubtedly the irrefutable and fundamental proof that there is a displacement plates.

Now, those who study this movement that occurs in the center of the lats estimate that it is very small, being a movement that involves millimeters each year. When the new material rocky appears, once cooled and transformed into such it will align itself according to the magnetic field of the earth. And thanks to the orientation that it reaches, it was possible to know the variations of this field throughout the history of the earth.

An example of an oceanic ridge is the so-called ridge Antarctic-American which is made up of the deviated boundary between the South American plate and the Antarctic plate and encompasses the entire ocean floor between the Bouvet triple point and the Sandwich Islands fault, located east of these.