The Seafloor Spreading Hypothesis

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.

The seafloor spreading hypothesis.

These plates float atop an underlying rock layer called the asthenosphere. Tuzo wilson combined the continental drift and seafloor spreading hypotheses to propose the theory of plate tectonics. Seafloor spreading as upwelling of magma continues the plates continue to diverge a process known as seafloor spreading. The seafloor spreading hypothesis scientists brought these observations together in the early 1960s to create the seafloor spreadinghypothesis.

First proposed in the early 1960s by the american geologist harry h. This evidence was from the investigations of the molten material seafloor drilling radiometric age dating and fossil ages and the magnetic stripes. Hess its major tenets gave great support to the theory of continental drift continental drift. Magma at the mid ocean ridge creates new seafloor.

Tuzo said that earth s crust or lithosphere was divided into large rigid pieces called plates. Seafloor spreading is a geologic process in which tectonic plate s large slabs of earth s lithosphere split apart from each other. In 1962 these ideas. When oceanic plates diverge tensional stress causes fractures to occur in the lithosphere.

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 theory that oceanic crust forms along submarine mountain zones known collectively as the mid ocean ridge system and spreads out laterally away from them. Hess like wegener ran into resistance because little ocean floor data existed for testing his ideas. Seafloor spreading and other tectonic activity processes are the result of mantle convection.

In 1959 he informally presented this hypothesis in a manuscript that was widely circulated. Resulted in a ground breaking hypothesis that later would be called seafloor spreading. This evidence however was also used to support the theory of continental drift. 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.

Seafloor spreading helps explain continental drift in the theory of plate tectonics. In this hypothesis hot buoyant mantle rises up a mid ocean ridge causing the ridge to rise upward figurebelow. In 1965 a canadian geophysicist j. Harry hess s hypothesis about seafloor spreading had collected several pieces of evidence to support the theory.