Did you Know the Earth’s Longest Mountain Range?

Big mountain ranges are on every continent, but the longest chain of peaks isn’t on any of these seven big pieces of land. Instead, it’s underwater.

Called the mid-ocean range, this super long mountain chain follows the edges of Earth’s tectonic plates and stretches around the world like the stitching on a baseball. It’s about 65,000 kilometers (40,390 miles) long in total, way longer than the Andes, the longest mountain range on land, which is only 7,600 kilometers (4,700 miles) long. That’s not very impressive.

Mid-ocean

Actually, the mid-ocean range has an advantage because it’s made up of many separate underwater ridges found where tectonic plates meet. At these spots, the plates move apart, letting magma come up and fill the gaps.

Mountains and Valleys

This makes a line of mountains and valleys on the ocean floor. Usually, the highest parts of these different undersea ridges are about 2,500 meters (8,200 feet) under the ocean surface. One of the most well-known ones is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which goes down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean from the Arctic to the Antarctic.

Since the Earth’s tectonic plates touch each other, the ridges that appear between them are all linked, creating a continuous set of underwater ranges that together form the mid-ocean range.

Read the Original Article IFLSCIENCE

Read more Seismic Shifts: USGS Reveals Innovative Earthquake Hazard Map