Sea Floor Spreading Essay

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.

Sea floor spreading essay. He conjointly recognized that the temperature concerning the middle atlantic ridge was hotter than the surface removed from it. Sea floor spreading and plate boundaries are not a common subject to anyone outside of a scientific or marine biology lab. Seafloor spreading theory that oceanic crust forms along submarine mountain zones and spreads out laterally away from them. Part of his mission had been to study the deepest parts of the ocean floor.

The hypo thesis of sea floor spreading was first formulated by the late professor harry hess of princeton university in 1960. Hess went on to say that as the ocean crust spreads and cools over millions. After much thought he proposed in 1960 that the movement of the. Seafloor spreading occurs along mid ocean ridges large mountain ranges rising from the ocean floor.

By the utilization of the echo sounder hess was ready to map the ocean bottom and discovered the middle atlantic ridge mid ocean ridge. 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. According to hess hypothesis seafloor spreading is a process where the upwelling. The purpose of this paper is to identify plate boundaries.

The sea floor is geologically very young not more than 160 million years old only 1 30th of the age of the earth. Essay on seafloor spreading was projected by an american geologist harry in 1960. This seafloor spreading hypothesis had been proposed a few years earlier by harry hess a petrologist at princeton university and robert dietz an oceanographer in the us coast and geodetic survey the federal department that made maps of the oceans and us coastlines. Compare and contrast ideas behind plate tectonics and the theory of the continental drift.

Harry hess was a geologist. In 1946 he had discovered that hundreds of flat topped mountains perhaps sunken islands shape the pacific floor. The man who discovered sea floor spreading was harry hess.