What is the continental shelf? Detailed answer

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What is the continental shelf? Detailed answer

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What is the continental shelf?

When you talk about the Atlantic Ocean, you only mean the top layer of water. But what is under water, at the bottom of the ocean? Let's imagine that we are traveling from New York east across the Atlantic Ocean. This is the picture of the bottom that will open up to us. For about 320 km, the bottom gradually lowers. It is usually flat, but sometimes has V-shaped valleys and canyons. This is the continental shelf, part of the North American continent. It so happened that it is too low to protrude above the sea.

At a depth of about 360 m, the shelf suddenly ends. It no longer descends smoothly, but breaks off. This is the edge of the continent, or the slope that goes all the way to the bottom of the ocean. Descending along this slope, we find ourselves at a depth of about 4 km. Now we are crossing the ocean at its deepest point. Here the bottom of the ocean is flat. It is called the deep sea plain. Such plains cover about a third of the ocean area and are one of the most flat places on Earth.

If we continue to move along the ocean, then soon we will reach the place of underwater elevations. Some of them look like hills. This is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Somewhere around the middle of the range, the hills become higher and steeper, and some rise like mountains to a height of about 1500 m from the bottom. Between the mountains there are deep-water valleys with a flat surface. Right in the middle of the ridge lies the largest underwater valley. It looks like a rift between two parts of the ridge.

If we continue to the east, we will again cross the deep-sea plain, which gently rises to the continental shelf off the coast of Portugal. This is the picture of the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Author: Likum A.

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

What is a cold?

Surely most of you know the joke about the doctor who says to a patient with a cold: "Only if you have pneumonia can I treat you." The common cold is not only one of the most annoying diseases to a person, but also the most mysterious.

More than 90% of Americans get a cold every year, and more than half of them get sick more than once. You probably know the signs of a cold as well as any doctor. Your nose runs, you sneeze a lot, your throat hurts or tickles, and sometimes you get a headache. Later, cough and fever appear.

In adults, colds are rarely serious. But in children, these signs may actually be the first symptoms of a more serious illness, such as measles or diphtheria. That is why children with a cold must be under the supervision of a doctor.

A cold develops in one to three days and has three stages. The first is called "dry", it is not very long. The nose is blocked, the throat begins to tickle, and the eyes are watery. In the second stage, your nose is running. And finally, there is a cough and fever.

Now for the mystery. What is a cold and what causes it? We can describe it as an acute inflammation of the upper respiratory tract. But medicine does not know what causes the common cold!

It is assumed that the disease is caused by a specific virus. But here's what's interesting - it turns out that it is in our throat all the time, but it attacks when our body's resistance drops. The same happens with other bacteria found here. Thus, the cold virus weakens us, while others infect.

The best way to avoid getting a cold is to keep your resistance high. Namely - eating well, resting enough, dressing for the weather and not communicating with people who have already caught a cold.

Test your knowledge! Did you know...

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According to the US Federal Aviation Administration, the use of lasers against commercial aircraft has steadily increased since the FAA began keeping records of such incidents. More than 2015 such incidents were reported in the US in 3700, and in March last year, a California resident was sentenced to 14 years in prison for "shooting" a laser into a police helicopter. A similar situation is observed in the UK, where the local Civil Aviation Authority registers 4-5 cases of laser use every day, and in November, while landing at Heathrow Airport, a pilot was injured in the eye by a "military" power laser.

However, "shooting" a laser at aircraft can also serve quite useful purposes, as demonstrated by researchers at the University of Oxford and the innovation division of Airbus. Since 2013, they have been working on the Hyperion project, named after one of the titan children of Uranus and Gaia in ancient Greek mythology. Hyperion was chosen, apparently, because the name in ancient Greek means "very high", and the project participants aimed quite high - in the literal and figurative sense.

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The researchers call the advantages of their installation low weight. It would be easier to install lasers for transmitting information directly on aircraft. But such devices are heavy and bulky, and the authors of MRR expect to use it for both drones and microsatellites. If in the first case the "Hyperion" passed the tests with a drone, then in the second case a titanic task lies ahead: the maximum distance for which the MMR is enough so far is 1 km.

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