Sea Floor Spreading And Plate Tectonics

When the concept of seafloor spreading came along scientists recognized that it was the mechanism to explain how continents could move around earth s surface.

Sea floor spreading and plate tectonics. 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 and spreads out laterally away from them. As upwelling of magma continues the plates continue to diverge a process known as seafloor spreading. Subduction happens where tectonic plates crash into each other instead of spreading apart.

Theory of plate tectonics. Seafloor spreading helps to explain continental drift in the theory of plate tectonics. These age data also allow the rate of seafloor spreading to be. Plates are composed of lithosphere about 100 km thick that float on the ductile asthenosphere.

3 emergence of the seafloor spreading hypothesis and associated recycling of oceanic. In 1967 mckenzie and parker suggested the theory of plate tectonics. 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. When oceanic plates diverge tensional stress causes fractures to occur in the lithosphere.

Like the scientists before us we will now merge the ideas of continental drift and seafloor spreading into the theory of plate tectonics. The continents are embedded in the thicker lithospheric plates carried along by the action of seafloor spreading. The denser lithospheric material then melts back into the earth s mantle. It is not just the continents that are drifting.

Theory of plate tectonics upsc ias. Morgan later outlined the theory in 1968. 2 confirmation of repeated reversals of the earth magnetic field in the geologic past. The motivating force for seafloor spreading ridges is tectonic plate slab pull at subduction zones rather than magma pressure although there is typically.

At subduction zones the edge of the denser plate subducts or slides beneath the less dense one. Seafloor spreading is just one part of plate tectonics. Plate tectonics it was from the continental drift theory convection current theory and the theory of seafloor spreading the theory of plate tectonics was formulated. Plate tectonics by combining the sea floor spreading theory with continental drift and information on global seismicity the new theory of plate tectonics became a coherent theory to explain crustal movements.

According to the theory of plate tectonics the earth s lithosphere is broken into distinct plates which are. In particular four major scientific developments spurred the formulation of the plate tectonics theory.