Sea Floor Spreading Hess

The idea that the seafloor itself moves and also carries the continents with it as it spreads from a central rift axis was proposed by harold hammond hess from princeton university and robert dietz of the u s.

Sea floor spreading hess. In addition he found that the deepest parts of the oceans were very close to continental margins in the pacific with ocean trenches extending down to depths of over 11 km in the case of the marianas trench off the coast of japan. Part of his mission had been to study the deepest parts of the ocean floor. Hess went on to say that as the ocean crust spreads and cools over millions of years it becomes denser and eventually sinks down into oceanic trenches or subduction zones a long way from where it forms at the mid ocean ridge crest.

Like wegener he was keenly interested in other sciences in addition to geology. Seafloor spreading is a geologic process in which tectonic plate s large slabs of earth s lithosphere split apart from each other. In 1946 he had discovered that hundreds of.

Check all that apply. Hess who served for years as the head of princeton s geology department died in 1969. This theory later became known as sea floor spreading.

Hess s seafloor spreading model the existence of these three types of large striking seafloor features demanded a global rather than local tectonic explanation. The first comprehensive attempt at such an explanation was made by harry h. According to hess s theory what might happen if the magma under a mid ocean ridge cools.

His theory followed that magma from the mantle could ooze up at mid oceanic rides and cool thereby expanding and pushing the plates on either side of the ridge away from it. Naval electronics laboratory in san diego in the 1960s. What evidence supports hess s theory of seafloor spreading.

The plates on either side of the. Hess discovered that the oceans were shallower in the middle and identified the presence of mid ocean ridges raised above the surrounding generally flat sea floor abyssal plain by as much as 1 5 km. Seafloor spreading theory that oceanic crust forms along submarine mountain zones known collectively as the mid ocean ridge system and spreads out laterally away from them.