Sea Floor Spreading Continental Drift

This is caused by plate tectonics.

Sea floor spreading continental drift. When oceanic plates diverge tensional stress causes fractures to occur in the lithosphere. Seafloor spreading is one of the observations which has been used to seek to prove the continental drift theory. 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. 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.

Seafloor spreading helps to explain continental drift in the theory of plate tectonics. 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. Seafloor spreading proves that the ocean itself is a site of tectonic activity. Seafloor spreading disproves an early part of the theory of continental drift.

Supporters of continental drift originally theorize d that the continents moved drifted through unmoving oceans. 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. 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. Keeping earth in shape.

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. Therefore we can conclude that continental drift is. Continental drift is the gradual movement of continental plates over the earth s surface over time.

Seafloor spreading is caused by two plates moving apart. Continental drift is a very similar process to seafloor spreading. In 1965 a canadian geophysicist j. 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 mid ocean ridge is where the seafloor spreading occurs in which tectonic plates large slabs of earth s lithosphere split apart from each other. 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. The theory has caused a revolution in the way we think about the earth.