A country sitting on a seam

Deep time

The only place you can walk the ridge

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a mountain chain running down the middle of the Atlantic, where the North American and Eurasian plates move apart and new crust forms in the gap. It is almost entirely underwater.

Iceland is the exception. A persistent hotspot beneath the ridge produces far more magma here than elsewhere along it, enough to build the island above sea level. That is why Iceland is volcanically active, why it keeps making new land, and why it is the one stretch of this global feature you can stand on.

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