The deep mantle may be pushing the Atlantic Ocean apart

[Judi Lynn]

By Yasemin Saplakoglu - Staff Writer 32 minutes ago

The Atlantic is expanding by a couple of inches a year.

The Atlantic Ocean is getting wider, shoving the Americas to one side and Europe and Africa to the other. But it’s not known exactly how.

A new study suggests that deep beneath the Earth’s crust, in a layer called the mantle, sizzling-hot rocks are rising up and pushing on tectonic plates — those rocky jigsaw pieces that form Earth's crust — that meet beneath the Atlantic.

Previously, scientists thought that the continents were mostly being pulled apart as the plates beneath the ocean moved in opposite directions and crashed into other plates, folding under the force of gravity. But the new study suggests that’s not the whole picture.

The research began in 2016, when a group of researchers set sail on a research vessel to the widest part of the Atlantic Ocean between South America and Africa; in other words, to "the middle of nowhere," said lead author Matthew Agius, who was a postdoctoral researcher with the University of Southampton in the U.K. at the time, but is now at the Roma Tre University in Italy.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/atlantic-ocean-widening-mantle-upwelling.html

[Warpy]

1. There is no "may be" about it

You can see it on the surface in Iceland, a huge crack meandering through the island that will most likely give rise to a flood basalt in the future (distant future, I hope, flood basalts turn nasty worldwide).

[cstanleytech]

2. Iceland already has had a number of flood basalt eruptions unless you mean on the order of the

Deccan Traps in which case I would say "yes, its possible".