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The stripes on one side of the mid-ocean ridge were the mirror image of those on the other side. By identifying a reversal with a known age and measuring the distance of that reversal from the spreading center, the spreading half-rate could be computed. magnetic stripes formed during seafloor spreading
Magnetic anomalies off west coast of North America. Dashed lines are spreading centers on mid-ocean ridges. The Vine–Matthews-Morley hypothesis correlates the symmetric magnetic patterns seen on the seafloor with geomagnetic field reversals. At mid-ocean ridges, new crust is created by the injection, extrusion, and solidification of magma.
Magnetic stripes are the result of reversals of the Earth's field and seafloor spreading. New oceanic crust is magnetized as it forms and then it moves away from the ridge in both directions. The models show a ridge (a) about 5 million years ago (b) about 2 million years ago and (c) in the present. [1]
A geomagnetic reversal is a change in a planet's dipole magnetic field such that the positions of magnetic north and magnetic south are interchanged (not to be confused with geographic north and geographic south). The Earth's magnetic field has alternated between periods of normal polarity, in which the predominant direction of the field was ...
The polarity of the Earth's magnetic field is recorded in igneous rocks, and reversals of the field are thus detectable as "stripes" centered on mid-ocean ridges where the sea floor is spreading, while the stability of the geomagnetic poles between reversals has allowed paleomagnetism to track the past motion of continents.
Mapping of variation over an area is valuable in detecting structures obscured by overlying material. The magnetic variation (geomagnetic reversals) in successive bands of ocean floor parallel with mid-ocean ridges was important evidence for seafloor spreading, a concept central to the theory of plate tectonics.
The second piece of evidence in support of continental drift came during the late 1950s and early 60s from data on the bathymetry of the deep ocean floors and the nature of the oceanic crust such as magnetic properties and, more generally, with the development of marine geology [54] which gave evidence for the association of seafloor spreading ...
Drummond Hoyle Matthews FRS [1] (5 February 1931 – 20 July 1997), known as "Drum", [2] was a British marine geologist and geophysicist and a key contributor to the theory of plate tectonics. His work, along with that of fellow Briton Fred Vine and Canadian Lawrence Morley, showed how variations in the magnetic properties of rocks forming the ...