The rover makes its final discovery at the Mid Atlantic Ridge. The sea floor has a gash, a weeping wound at a depth of almost 10,000 feet (3,000 meters). When a team of British scientists recover rock samples, they reveal something extraordinary. The oceanic crust is missing. The Mid Atlantic Ridge is a divergent boundary where tectonic plates are moving apart at a rate of about an inch (2.5 cm) a year – pushed apart by magma which moves up to the surface to form new oceanic crust. But there it’s a different story. As the plates are pulled apart, the interior of the Earth is being exposed on the sea floor. Scientists are now grappling to understand what appears to be a new process by which earth’s crust is created.