What's Underneath The Ocean Floor?

There ’s an old adage that we be intimate more about space than we do about the profoundness of the ocean , as if it ’s not rational to seewhat lurksdown there and immediately want to leave the planet .

The sea is incredibly mysterious , with an averagedepthof 3.7 kilometers ( 2.3 Roman mile ) . The deep part of the world ’s sea , locate in the southern part of the Mariana Trench and know as the Challenger Deep , is approximately 10,935 measure ( 35,876 feet ) rich . Here ’s a video from ourYouTube channelto give you an mind of how far that is , come with by some light feeling of experiential dread .

But beyond the beautiful and slightlyodd - lookingcreatures of the ocean ’s deepness , what lie beneath ? Just likeon domain , the solvent is – eventually – " rock ‘n’ roll " .

The Earth ’s crust , on land , is variable . Onaverage , it is about 30 kilometre ( 19 mile ) duncical beneath continents , though under mountain ranges it can make as much as 100 kilometre ( 62 miles ) . Beneath the oceans , it does n’t vary as much and is on average6 - 7 kilometers(3.7 - 4.3 miles ) thick .

Continental crust – the part of the crust which forms our acres deal – is mostly made from unlike igneousgranites . Leading into the sea there are continental slopes , made up of granite , and sedimentary rocks that have been formed by pressure applied to sediment . Deeper in the ocean , the floor ( beneath Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin and sediment ) is made up almost whole of mafic oceanic crust , mainlybasalt and gabbro .

Basalt ( and other igneous rocks ) is formed when molten rockcoolsquickly .

In the oceans , there are " mid - ocean ridges " where magma nominate its way through spread in the pelagic crust , and Modern rock candy that will become pelagic insolence forms .

The thin crust found in the ocean is tempting for geologists , for the possible access to the mantle stone beneath . One team is currentlydrillinga hole into the ocean storey and collect samples of mantle rock that have n’t been weathered by exposure to the factor .

So far , they have reached mantle rock-and-roll that has never melted into magma , which would then cool to form igneous rock encounter in the pelagic incrustation . However , the rocks still show augury of weathering from seawater , propose the team demand to keep digging to get to ( and presumablytaste ) the forbidden goop within .