Science By Headline

The Earth is splitting apart - and scientists are seeing something happen for the first time

Scientists are always discovering something new on Earth - and this time it is the birth of new oceanic crust.

The team say they have historic evidence of this process where the seafloor spreads apart, leading to a release of magma from inside Earth that rises to the surface, it is after this and when it gets in contact with cool seawater that it then solidifies and turns into new ocean crust.

This research, published in Nature, was carried out by French scientists at an autonomous observatory near Amsterdam Island, in the southern Indian Ocean on the edge of the Australian and Antarctic plates and the the Southeast Indian Ridge is nearby too.

Alternatively we have the heading and part of the abstract from the Nature paper on which this story is based.

Anatomy of a seafloor spreading event captured by in situ seismogeodesy

Over geological time, the growth of the ocean floor involves magmatic and tectonic extension1 at mid-ocean ridges (MORs). Because seismogeodetic monitoring of these submarine plate boundaries remains challenging2,3,4,5,6,7, little is known about how these systems operate on yearly timescales. Here we report the first, to our knowledge, in situ observation of a rifting event at a MOR segment that combines hydroacoustic, direct-path ranging and bottom-pressure measurements, with repeated seafloor mapping.