EVERYDAY SCIENCE

Detailed explanation-1: -Alfred Wegener produced evidence in 1912 that the continents are in motion, but because he could not explain what forces could move them, geologists rejected his ideas. Almost 50 years later Harry Hess confirmed Wegener’s ideas by using the evidence of seafloor spreading to explain what moved continents.

Detailed explanation-2: -He published ‘The History of Ocean Basins’ in 1962, in which he outlined a theory that could explain how the continents could actually drift. This theory later became known as ‘Sea Floor Spreading’.

Detailed explanation-3: -The seafloor spreading hypothesis was proposed by the American geophysicist Harry H. Hess in 1960.

Detailed explanation-4: -Harry Hess was a geologist and Navy submarine commander during World War II. Part of his mission had been to study the deepest parts of the ocean floor. In 1946 he had discovered that hundreds of flat-topped mountains, perhaps sunken islands, shape the Pacific floor.

Detailed explanation-5: -In this classic paper, Hess outlined the basics of how seafloor spreading works: molten rock (magma) oozes up from the Earth’s interior along the mid-oceanic ridges, creating new seafloor that spreads away from the active ridge crest and, eventually, sinks into the deep oceanic trenches.