Sea Floor Magnetic Pattern

These patterns of stripes provide the history of seafloor spreading.

Sea floor magnetic pattern.

Samples collected from the ocean floor show that the age of oceanic crust increases with distance from the spreading centre important evidence in favour of this process. As upwelling of magma continues the plates continue to diverge a process known as seafloor spreading. The magnetism of mid ocean ridges helped scientists first identify the process of seafloor spreading in the early 20th century. As long as the magnetic field remains constant the polarity stripe widens.

When the earth s magnetic field reverses a new stripe with the new polarity begins. Geophysicists can read these patterns from the magnetic anomalies they measure with a magnetometer. Where the magnetic wiggles or anomalies are broader the spreading rate has been faster. Such magnetic patterns led to recognition of the occurrence of sea floor spreading and they remain some of the strongest evidence for the theory of plate tectonics.

These age data also allow the rate of seafloor spreading to be. At slow spreading ridges the anomalies are squeezed tighter together but the basic. Magnetic evidence for seafloor spreading explains how magnetic polarity frozen into seafloor basalts reveals evidence for the creation of new seafloor at mid ocean ridges.