Describe The Hypothesis Of Sea Floor Spreading

In 1912 when alfred wegener proposed that the continents had once been joined together and had split apart the biggest weakness in his hypothesis was the.

Describe the hypothesis of sea floor spreading.

Describe the hypothesis of 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. 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. 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.

Harry hess s hypothesis about seafloor spreading had collected several pieces of evidence to support the theory. Evidence 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.

The break fills in with magma because the oceanic crust is not very thick and it is right above the magma filled mantle. The seafloor spreading hypothesis was proposed by the american geophysicist harry h. Wikimedia commons has media related to sea floor spreading. These age data also allow the rate of seafloor spreading to be determined and they show that rates.

Sea floor spreading is when there is a break in the oceanic crust called a ridge caused by the plates moving apart. 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. 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.