seafloor spreading

Growth of the ocean crust outwards (sideways) from ocean ridges. The concept of seafloor spreading has been combined with that of continental drift and incorporated into plate tectonics.

Seafloor spreading was proposed in 1960 by US geologist Harry Hess (1906–1969), based on his observations of ocean ridges and the relative youth of all ocean beds. In 1963 British geophysicists Fred Vine and Drummond Matthews observed that the floor of the Atlantic Ocean was made up of rocks that could be arranged in strips, each strip being magnetized either normally or reversely (due to changes in the Earth's polarity when the North Pole becomes the South Pole and vice versa, termed polar reversal). These strips were parallel and formed identical patterns on both sides of the ocean ridge. The implication was that each strip was formed at some stage in geological time when the magnetic field was polarized in a certain way. The seafloor magnetic-reversal patterns could be matched to dated magnetic reversals found in terrestrial rock. It could then be shown that new rock forms continuously and spreads away from the ocean ridges, with the oldest rock located farthest away from the midline. The observation was made independently in 1963 by Canadian geologist Lawrence Morley, studying an ocean ridge in the Pacific near Vancouver Island.