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Ridge spreading and drilling profile illustrations.

Ridge spreading and drilling profile illustrations.
Ridge spreading and drilling profile illustrations.
Ridge spreading and drilling profile illustrations.
Ridge spreading and drilling profile illustrations.
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290063
Dick, Henry
Ridge spreading and drilling profile illustrations.
Illustration
11/14/2016
henry_dick-1.jpg
Image Of the Day caption:
Atlantis Bank formed on the seafloor as the Southwest Indian mid-ocean ridge spread apart along a tectonic fault (top). The lower-crust gabbro rock that formed Atlantis Bank was slowly pushed up to the surface over the course of 26 million years. Atlantis Bank makes an ideal target to try to drill to the Moho, the boundary between Earth's crust and mantle, because there are no upper-crust basalts and dikes to drill through. WHOI geologist Henry Dick, a 2016 AAAS Fellow, led expeditions that drilled holes 735B in 1989 and U1473A in 2016, the first phases of a project to sample the Moho (bottom).
Caption from Oceanus magazine, Vol. 52, No. 1, pg. 47:
Atlantis Bank formed as the Southwest Indian Ridge spread apart (left). A huge block of deep-ocean crust slid up to the surface over 26 million years along the ramp of a tectonic fault. Its an ideal target to try to drill to the Moho, the boundary between Earth's crust and mantle, because there are no upper- crust basalts and dikes to drill through. In 1989, WHOI geologist Henry Dick led an expedition that drilled Hole 735B 1,640 feet deep into lower-crust gabbro rocks. In 2016, he returned to drill Hole U1473A, the first phase of a project to try to drill serpentine and mantle rocks above and below the Moho. Phase II will use the mammoth Japanese drillship Chikyu.
Illustration courtesy of Henry Dick
© Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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