Basalt Seafloor

Once formed in the deep crust basalt magma wants to rise and at the center of the mid ocean ridge it oozes onto the seafloor where it rapidly solidifies in the ice cold water in the form of lava pillows.

Basalt seafloor.

Basalt is a dark colored fine grained igneous rock composed mainly of plagioclase and pyroxene minerals. B ə ˈ s ɔː l t ˈ b eɪ s ɒ l t uk. The carbonsafe cascadia project team is conducting a pre feasibility study to evaluate technical and nontechnical aspects of collecting and storing 50 mmt of co 2 in a safe ocean basalt reservoir offshore from washington state and british columbia. It most commonly forms as an extrusive rock such as a lava flow but can also form in small intrusive bodies such as an igneous dike or a thin sill it has a composition similar to gabbro the difference between basalt and gabbro is that basalt is a fine grained rock while.

Farther down basalt that doesn t erupt hardens in dikes stacked vertically like cards in a deck. More than 90 of all volcanic rock on earth is basalt and the eruption of basalt lava is observed by geologists at about 20. Basalt the once molten rock that makes up most new oceanic crust is a fairly magnetic substance and scientists began using magnetometers to measure the magnetism of the ocean floor in the 1950s what they discovered was that the magnetism of the ocean floor around. ˈ b æ s ɔː l t ˈ b æ s əl t is a mafic extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of lava rich in magnesium and iron exposed at or very near the surface of a terrestrial planet or a moon.

Because of seafloor spreading the metasomatic products cover a major part of the planet and therefore in term of area are the most extensive of. Every so often it has occurred over 170 times over the past 100 million years the poles will suddenly switch. Seafloor basalt interaction between cold seawater and hot mafic ultramafic rocks in the 65 000 km long oceanic spreading ridge system is likely the largest active metamorphic system on the planet. A flood basalt is the result of a giant volcanic eruption or series of eruptions that covers large stretches of land or the ocean floor with basalt lava flood basalt provinces such as the deccan traps of india are often called traps after the swedish word trappa meaning stairs due to the characteristic stairstep geomorphology of many associated landscapes.

Located on the eastern flank of the east pacific rise dorado outcrop is a site of low temperature thioprofundum lithotrophicum suggesting carbon and. The ocean plates spread and grow in opposite directions so rocks that are equidistance from the center have the same magnetic polarity and age. As the magma and lava cool at seafloor spreading centers whatever magnetic field is present get ingrained into the rock.