Spartel Sill
The Spartel or Espartel Sill is one of the sills separating the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. This threshold is the second shallowest seafloor pass between the Iberian Peninsula and Africa. It is located near the Strait of Gibraltar and the Camarinal Sill, at {{coord, 35, 55, N, 5, 47, W, name=Camarinal Sill, display=inline,title, at a depth of −300 m. The deep, salty and dense waters of the Mediterranean must climb to that depth when flowing towards the Atlantic. See also * Spartel Bank *Saddle point In mathematics, a saddle point or minimax point is a point on the surface of the graph of a function where the slopes (derivatives) in orthogonal directions are all zero (a critical point), but which is not a local extremum of the function ... Aquatic sills Strait of Gibraltar ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Aquatic Sill
An aquatic sill (or an oceanic sill) is a sea floor barrier of relatively shallow depth (tens to hundreds of meters) that restricts water movement between benthic zones of an oceanic basin or lake bottom. There are roughly 400 sills in the Earth's oceans, covering 0.01% of the seafloor. A classic example is the Strait of Gibraltar Gateway between the Mediterranean sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Formation processes Aquatic sills are common in fjords, limiting their water exchange with the ocean. After the last ice age, approximately 18,000 years ago, continental glaciers extended to the continental shelves and created U-shaped glacial valleys, with long narrow openings that rise upward near the outer shelf, thereby creating sills. Aquatic sills as barriers Circulation barriers Aquatic sills can influence water circulation by restricting the movement of bottom water masses, resulting in partial to total separation of two basins. The restricted water circulation affects tempo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant. The Sea has played a central role in the history of Western civilization. Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was partly or completely desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years during the Messinian salinity crisis before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago. The Mediterranean Sea covers an area of about , representing 0.7% of the global ocean surface, but its connection to the Atlantic via the Strait of Gibraltar—the narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates the Iberian Peninsula in Europe from Morocco in Africa—is only wide. The Mediterranean Sea e ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe and Asia from the "New World" of the Americas in the European perception of the World. The Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between Europe and Africa to the east, and North and South America to the west. As one component of the interconnected World Ocean, it is connected in the north to the Arctic Ocean, to the Pacific Ocean in the southwest, the Indian Ocean in the southeast, and the Southern Ocean in the south (other definitions describe the Atlantic as extending southward to Antarctica). The Atlantic Ocean is divided in two parts, by the Equatorial Counter Current, with the North(ern) Atlantic Ocean and the South(ern) Atlantic Ocean split at about 8°N. Scientific explorations of the A ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defining the westernmost edge of Eurasia. It is principally divided between Spain and Portugal, comprising most of their territory, as well as a small area of Southern France, Andorra, and Gibraltar. With an area of approximately , and a population of roughly 53 million, it is the second largest European peninsula by area, after the Scandinavian Peninsula. Name Greek name The word ''Iberia'' is a noun adapted from the Latin word "Hiberia" originating in the Ancient Greek word Ἰβηρία ('), used by Greek geographers under the rule of the Roman Empire to refer to what is known today in English as the Iberian Peninsula. At that time, the name did not describe a single geographical entity or a distinct population; the same name was us ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area and 20% of its land area.Sayre, April Pulley (1999), ''Africa'', Twenty-First Century Books. . With billion people as of , it accounts for about of the world's human population. Africa's population is the youngest amongst all the continents; the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4. Despite a wide range of natural resources, Africa is the least wealthy continent per capita and second-least wealthy by total wealth, behind Oceania. Scholars have attributed this to different factors including geography, climate, tribalism, colonialism, the Cold War, neocolonialism, lack of democracy, and corruption. Despite this low concentration of wealth, recent economic expansion and the large and young population make Afr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Strait Of Gibraltar
The Strait of Gibraltar is a narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates Europe from Africa. The two continents are separated by of ocean at the Strait's narrowest point between Punta de Tarifa in Spain and Point Cires in Morocco. Ferries cross between the two continents every day in as little as 35 minutes. The Strait's depth ranges between . The strait lies in the territorial waters of Morocco, Spain, and the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, foreign vessels and aircraft have the freedom of navigation and overflight to cross the strait of Gibraltar in case of continuous transit. Names and etymology The name comes from the Rock of Gibraltar, which in turn originates from the Arabic (meaning "Tariq's Mount"), named after Tariq ibn Ziyad. It is also known as the Straits of Gibraltar, the Gut of Gibraltar (although this is mostly archaic), the STROG (STRait Of Gibralt ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Camarinal Sill
The Camarinal Sill is the sill separating the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. This threshold is the shallowest seafloor pass between the Iberian Peninsula and Africa. It is located approximately 25 km west of the narrowest section of the Strait of Gibraltar and 20 km east of the Espartel Sill, at , at an elevation of −280 m. Its formation is linked to the Zanclean flood and the termination of the Messinian salinity crisis, when the Mediterranean was abruptly refilled through the Strait of Gibraltar, excavating the 900-metre-deep gorge that lies underneath the water. A competing hypothesis suggests that both the gorge and the Camarinal Sill are the result of fluvial erosion during the desiccation of the Mediterranean (Messinian salinity crisis). Marine waters must climb to that depth when flowing between both ocean domains. During World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted f ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Density
Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the substance's mass per unit of volume. The symbol most often used for density is ''ρ'' (the lower case Greek letter rho), although the Latin letter ''D'' can also be used. Mathematically, density is defined as mass divided by volume: : \rho = \frac where ''ρ'' is the density, ''m'' is the mass, and ''V'' is the volume. In some cases (for instance, in the United States oil and gas industry), density is loosely defined as its weight per unit volume, although this is scientifically inaccurate – this quantity is more specifically called specific weight. For a pure substance the density has the same numerical value as its mass concentration. Different materials usually have different densities, and density may be relevant to buoyancy, purity and packaging. Osmium and iridium are the densest known elements at standard conditions for temperature and pressure. To simplify comparisons of density across different s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Spartel Bank
Spartel Bank or Majuán Bank is a submerged former island located in the Strait of Gibraltar near Cape Spartel and the Spartel Sill. Its highest point is currently below the surface. Spartel Bank is one of several seamounts in the bed of Gibraltar Strait; similar but deeper seamounts are found at Camarinal Sill and further east. These represent landslide blocks which slid south from the north bank of the Strait of Gibraltar when the strait was formed, possibly through erosion by inflowing waters of the Zanclean flood. It vanished under the surface approximately 12,000 years ago due to rising ocean levels from melting ice caps after the last Glacial Maximum. It has been proposed by researchers Jacques Collina-Girard and Marc-André Gutscher as a site for the legendary lost island of Atlantis. In follow-up correspondence, however, Gutscher indicated that the island could not have been Atlantis, referring to Plato's description of a Bronze Age society, which Spartel could not have su ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Saddle Point
In mathematics, a saddle point or minimax point is a point on the surface of the graph of a function where the slopes (derivatives) in orthogonal directions are all zero (a critical point), but which is not a local extremum of the function. An example of a saddle point is when there is a critical point with a relative minimum along one axial direction (between peaks) and at a relative maximum along the crossing axis. However, a saddle point need not be in this form. For example, the function f(x,y) = x^2 + y^3 has a critical point at (0, 0) that is a saddle point since it is neither a relative maximum nor relative minimum, but it does not have a relative maximum or relative minimum in the y-direction. The name derives from the fact that the prototypical example in two dimensions is a surface that ''curves up'' in one direction, and ''curves down'' in a different direction, resembling a riding saddle or a mountain pass between two peaks forming a landform saddle. In te ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Aquatic Sills
Aquatic means relating to water; living in or near water or taking place in water; does not include groundwater, as "aquatic" implies an environment where plants and animals live. Aquatic(s) may also refer to: * Aquatic animal, either vertebrate or invertebrate, which lives in water for most or all of its life * Aquatic ecosystem, environmental system located in a body of water * Aquatic plants, also called hydrophytic plants or hydrophytes, are plants that have adapted to living in or on aquatic environments * ''Aquatic'' (album), 1994 album by the Australian experimental jazz trio, The Necks * Aquatics, another name for water sports See also * * Aquatics (other) * Freshwater ecosystem, an earth aquatic ecosystems * Limnology, the study of inland waters * Marine biology, the scientific study of organisms in the ocean or other marine or brackish bodies of water * Oceanography Oceanography (), also known as oceanology and ocean science, is the scientific study of th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |