![]() Because the Earth is a sphere, plate movements repeatedly cause faults that produce these ridge offsets," explains Prof. The individual segments of the ridges each begin or end in an offset at these incisions. They are cut by transverse valleys at almost regular intervals. However, the mid-ocean ridges do not form unbroken lines. "This is the engine that keeps the plates moving," explains Prof. In between, hot material from the Earth's interior reaches the surface, cools down, forms new ocean floor and pushes the older ocean floor apart. They mark the boundaries of the Earth's plates. ![]() Even at low resolution, several tens of thousands of kilometres long mid-ocean ridges can be recognised on such maps. Ingo Grevemeyer from GEOMAR, lead author of the study.Ī look at a global overview map of the ocean floors helps to understand the study. However, our analyses show that they are definitely actively involved in shaping the ocean floors," explains Prof. So far, they have been assigned a purely passive role within plate tectonics. "These are large offsets in the mid-ocean ridges. Today, five scientists from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, the Southern University of Science and Technology (Shenzhen, China) and GeoModelling Solutions GmbH (Switzerland) publish a study in the international scientific journal Nature that questions a previous basic assumption of plate tectonics. ![]()
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