Describe The Hypothesis Of Sea Floor Spreading

The seafloor spreading hypothesis was proposed by the american geophysicist harry h.

Describe the hypothesis of sea floor spreading.

Mid ocean ridges are underwater mountain ranges that typically occur at the center of an area of sea floor spreading. Seafloor spreading occurs along mid ocean ridges large mountain ranges rising from the ocean floor. On the basis of tharp s efforts and other new discoveries about the deep ocean floor hess postulated that molten material from earth s mantle continuously wells up along the crests of the mid ocean ridges that wind for nearly 80 000 km. Only four years after the maps with the zebra pattern of magnetic stripes were published the link between sea floor spreading and these patterns was correctly placed independently by lawrence morley and by fred vine and drummond matthews in 1963 now called the vine matthews morley hypothesis.

As upwelling of magma continues the plates continue to diverge a process known as seafloor spreading samples collected from the ocean floor show that the age of oceanic crust increases with distance from the spreading centre important evidence in favour of this process. Age of the seafloor rocks when scientists measured the age of seafloor rocks they found that younger rocks are found closer to the mid ocean ridges and older rocks are found closer to trenches these 2 pieces of evidence support the idea that the sea floor is spreading and that our theory of plate tectonics is valid by showing that the sea floor is not all the same age and is constantly. Wikimedia commons has media related to sea floor spreading. Divergent boundary linear feature that exists between two tectonic plates that are moving away from each other vine matthews morley hypothesis the first key scientific test of the seafloor spreading theory of continental drift and plate tectonics.

The mid atlantic ridge for instance separates the north american plate from the eurasian plate and the south american plate from the african plate the east pacific rise is a mid ocean ridge that runs through the eastern pacific ocean and separates the pacific plate from the north american. These age data also allow the rate of seafloor spreading to be determined and they show that rates. Evidence of sea floor spreading. Compare sea floor spreading with the formation of mid ocean ridges sea floor spreading is the process where two ocean plates move apart from each other.

This evidence was from the investigations of the molten material seafloor drilling radiometric age dating and fossil ages and the magnetic stripes. Harry hess s hypothesis about seafloor spreading had collected several pieces of evidence to support the theory. The break fills in with magma because the oceanic crust is not very thick and it is right above the magma filled mantle.