What Is The Ocean Floor Made Of

Ocean definition is the whole body of salt water that covers nearly three fourths of the surface of the earth.

What is the ocean floor made of. Oceanic crust is the uppermost layer of the oceanic portion of a tectonic plate it is composed of the upper oceanic crust with pillow lavas and a dike complex and the lower oceanic crust composed of troctolite gabbro and ultramafic cumulates. The crust overlies the solidified and uppermost layer of the mantle the crust and the solid mantle layer together constitute oceanic lithosphere. It s flat blue and honestly it s kind of boring. Back in 1977 a very interesting discovery was made on the deep ocean floor where no light penetrates.

In the deepest parts of the. While most life on this planet requires sunlight to live there is an. Bathymetry the shape of the ocean floor is largely a result of a process called plate tectonics the outer rocky layer of the earth includes about a dozen large sections called tectonic plates that are arranged like a spherical jig saw puzzle floating on top of the earth s hot flowing mantle. Other articles where ocean floor is discussed.

But underneath that surface there s a lot of stuff hidden at the bottom. It is composed of several layers not including the overlying sediment. The ocean floor has the same general character as the land areas of the world. Oceans cover nearly 71 percent of earth s surface.

An ocean is a huge body of salt water. There are four basic types of sediment of the sea floor. From land the ocean all looks the same. Plate tectonics and the ocean floor.

The lack of weathering and erosion in most areas however allows geological processes to be seen more clearly on. These vary from oozes made of carbonate from foraminiferal and calcareous phytoplankton and some silica that has settled through the water column. Oceanic crust is about 6 km 4 miles thick. Most of the seafloor is covered by sediments that average 350 m thick.

How to use ocean in a sentence. Oceanic crust the outermost layer of earth s lithosphere that is found under the oceans and formed at spreading centres on oceanic ridges which occur at divergent plate boundaries. They contain almost 98 percent of all the water on earth. Exploration of the seafloor and the earth s crust.