Can you see tectonic plates

You might recognize it from Season 4 of " Game of Thrones ". The exact meeting place is part of The Golden Circle , a popular tourist route for visitors who want to see the plates and the national park where Iceland's first parliament used to meet.

Visitors can also scuba dive or snorkel in the crack between the plates, called Silfra. There, you can touch both plates at the same time and see some of the clearest water on earth. Need another reason to book a trip here soon? It's about that time of year to see the Northern Lights. The most spectacular example of this is the Himalayas. The space created can also fill with new crustal material sourced from molten magma that forms below. Divergent boundaries can form within continents but will eventually open up and become ocean basins.

On land Divergent boundaries within continents initially produce rifts, which produce rift valleys. Under the sea The most active divergent plate boundaries are between oceanic plates and are often called mid-oceanic ridges. The relative motion of the plates is horizontal. They can occur underwater or on land, and crust is neither destroyed nor created.

Because of friction, the plates cannot simply glide past each other. Rather, stress builds up in both plates and when it exceeds the threshold of the rocks, the energy is released — causing earthquakes.

Privacy Statement Disclaimer and Copyright. Staff Search. Earthquakes Earthquakes at a Plate Boundary. The tectonic plates whose turbulent interactions formed Iceland, are the Eurasian tectonic plate and the North American tectonic plate. As the plates moved apart, excessive eruptions of lava constructed volcanoes and filled rift valleys.

Subsequent movement rifted these later lava fields, causing long, linear valleys bounded by parallel faults. The divergence of the ridge started in the north about million years ago and 90 million years ago in the south.

These movements continue today, accompanied by earthquakes, reactivation of old volcanoes, and creation of new ones. Iceland is the largest island on the ridge because of the additional volcanism caused by the hot spot beneath the country, which moves slowly towards the northwest. The tectonic plates move towards east and west, and both the North American and Eurasian systems move to the northwest across the hot spot.

Eruptions occur about every years and primarily consist of basaltic lava and tephra. A few long-lived centres, such as the volcano Hekla, erupt more silicic magmas. Based on the age of the basaltic rocks, Iceland can be divided into three zones. Tertiary flood basalts make up most of the northwest quadrant of the island. This stack of lava flows is at least 3, m thick. Quaternary flood basalts and hyaloclastites are exposed in the central, southwest and east parts of the island.

The Quaternary rocks are cut by the neovolcanic zone, areas of active rifting that contain most of the active volcanoes.