Sea Floor Spreading Evidence Of Plate Tectonics

As upwelling of magma continues the plates continue to diverge a process known as seafloor spreading.

Sea floor spreading evidence of plate tectonics.

Subduction happens where tectonic plates crash into each other instead of spreading apart. Strong evidence of seafloor spreading and plate tectonics. Evidence of sea floor spreading harry hess s hypothesis about seafloor spreading had collected several pieces of evidence to support the theory. The stripes alternate between those with magnetic material orientated toward magnetic north and those oriented in the opposite direction.

Measurements indicate that new crust moves away from a ridge at. By the 1950s geologists geophysicists seismologists oceanographers and physicists had accumulated a large body of data about the ocean floor and the underlying crust. 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. Paleomagnetism led the revival of the continental drift hypothesis and its transformation into theories of sea floor spreading and plate tectonics.

The regions that hold the unique record of earth s magnetic field lie along the mid ocean ridges where the sea floor is spreading. In the 1960s geologist harry hess proposed that the sea floor was moving outward from the midoceanic ridges. Theory of plate tectonics the evidence among the many gaps in scientific knowledge at the time of alfred wegener was an understanding of the dynamics of the ocean floors. 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.

Stripes of magnetic material in the seafloor provide strong evidence for tectonic theory. At subduction zones the edge of the denser plate subducts or slides beneath the less dense one. These age data also allow the rate of seafloor spreading to be. Spreading rate is the rate at which an ocean basin widens due to seafloor spreading.

Seafloor spreading as upwelling of magma continues the plates continue to diverge a process known as seafloor spreading. This evidence was from the investigations of the molten material seafloor drilling radiometric age dating and fossil ages and the magnetic stripes. Spreading rates determine if the ridge is fast intermediate or slow. Seafloor spreading is just one part of plate tectonics.

The rate at which new oceanic lithosphere is added to each tectonic plate on either side of a mid ocean ridge is the spreading half rate and is equal to half of the spreading rate. Plate tectonics plate tectonics seafloor spreading.