divergent movement makes the moving adjacent plates pull apart that cause spaces between the slabs
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divergent movement makes the moving adjacent plates pull apart that cause spaces between the slabs
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Scientists now have a fairly good understanding of how the plates move and how such movements relate to earthquake activity. Most movement occurs along narrow zones between plates where the results of plate-tectonic forces are most evident.
There are four types of plate boundaries:
Divergent boundaries -- where new crust is generated as the plates pull away from each other.
Convergent boundaries -- where crust is destroyed as one plate dives under another.
Transform boundaries -- where crust is neither produced nor destroyed as the plates slide horizontally past each other.
Plate boundary zones -- broad belts in which boundaries are not well defined and the effects of plate interaction are unclear.
Divergent boundaries
Divergent boundaries occur along spreading centers where plates are moving apart and new crust is created by magma pushing up from the mantle. Picture two giant conveyor belts, facing each other but slowly moving in opposite directions as they transport newly formed oceanic crust away from the ridge crest.
Perhaps the best known of the divergent boundaries is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This submerged mountain range, which extends from the Arctic Ocean to beyond the southern tip of Africa, is but one segment of the global mid-ocean ridge system that encircles the Earth. The rate of spreading along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge averages about 2.5 centimeters per year (cm/yr), or 25 km in a million years. This rate may seem slow by human standards, but because this process has been going on for millions of years, it has resulted in plate movement of thousands of kilometers. Seafloor spreading over the past 100 to 200 million years has caused the Atlantic Ocean to grow from a tiny inlet of water between the continents of Europe, Africa, and the Americas into the vast ocean that exists today.