Sea Floor Spreading Continental Drift

Seafloor spreading helps to explain continental drift in the theory of plate tectonics.

Sea floor spreading continental drift.

These plates float atop an underlying rock layer called the asthenosphere. Seafloor spreading proves that the ocean itself is a site of tectonic activity. This idea played a pivotal role in the development of the theory of plate tectonics which revolutionized geologic thought during the last quarter of the 20th century. Seafloor spreading disproves an early part of the theory of continental drift.

Continental drift and seafloor spreading are two natural occurring processes responsible for the generation of new fresh areas of the crust and the destruction of old crust. Continental drift is a very similar process to seafloor spreading. When oceanic plates diverge tensional stress causes fractures to occur in the lithosphere. The evidence for seafloor spreading is that new crust is constantly forming at mid ocean ridges through volcanic activity and then gradually moves in both directions away from these ridges.

This is caused by plate tectonics. Supporters of continental drift originally theorize d that the continents moved drifted through unmoving oceans. The motivating force for seafloor spreading ridges is tectonic plate slab pull at subduction zones rather than magma pressure although there is typically significant magma activity at spreading ridges. Therefore we can conclude that continental drift is.

Tuzo said that earth s crust or lithosphere was divided into large rigid pieces called plates. Seafloor spreading theory that oceanic crust forms along submarine mountain zones and spreads out laterally away from them. Continental drift is the gradual movement of continental plates over the earth s surface over time. Tuzo wilson combined the continental drift and seafloor spreading hypotheses to propose the theory of plate tectonics.

Its key impact was that it allowed the rates of plate motions at mid ocean ridges to be computed. The vine matthews morley hypothesis also known as the morley vine matthews hypothesis was the first key scientific test of the seafloor spreading theory of continental drift and plate tectonics. Seafloor spreading is one of the observations which has been used to seek to prove the continental drift theory. Continental drift sea floor spreading and plate tectonics plate tectonics is a theory developed in the late 1960s to explain how the outer layers of the earth move and deform.

Continental drift is also caused by plate tectonics. Seafloor spreading is a geologic process where there is a gradual addition of new oceanic crust in the ocean floor through a volcanic activity while moving the older rocks away from the mid oceanic ridge. Keeping earth in shape. The theory has caused a revolution in the way we think about the earth.