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How long could it take for the Pacific Ocean’s crust to form at a fast spreading rate?

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World map highlighting major features of the ocean basins, including trenches, ridges, basins, and plateaus labeled throughout the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern, and Arctic Oceans. Continents are shown with shaded terrain, and prominent undersea features such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Mariana Trench, and Kerguelen Plateau are marked across the map. — ocean basin Major features of the ocean basins.

At a fast spreading rate of approximately 15 cm (about 6 inches) per year, the entire crust beneath the Pacific Ocean—which spans roughly 15,000 km (9,300 miles) in width—could be produced in about 100 million years.1

New oceanic crust is continuously created at seafloor spreading centres, such as the East Pacific Rise, where magma wells up, cools, and moves laterally away from the ridge crest. While global spreading rates vary significantly—ranging from less than 10 mm per year to as much as 160 mm per year—the Pacific region is known for some of the most rapid rates on Earth.2341