The Plate Tectonic Theory

The earth wasn’t always solid. Billions of years ago it was a blob of magma floating in space. Over time the surface cooled, but the centre remained molten rock. The pressure and heat broke the surface into plates that float on a sea of magma below. These plates are constantly moving, drifting apart creating divergence boundaries and crashing together creating convergence boundaries, colliding with the power to forge mountains, and splitting solid rock like it was paper. The discovery of these plates didn’t happen over night, the theory has been developed over centuries and finally we understand how mountains are built and canyons are formed. The plate tectonic theory hasn’t been the most popular of theories, since the church used to disagree

However, there were seven main scientists that investigated the mystery and published their findings. These scientists formed the basis of the plate tectonic theory.

Abraham Ortelius (1527 - 1598), Nicholas Steno (1638 - 1686), and James Hutton (1726 - 1797) were the first three scientists to work on the plate tectonic theory, they made

It was a new idea with many opportunities for new discoveries and this drew in scientists like Arthor Holmes (1890 - 1965), Harry H. Hess (1906 - 1969), Fredrick J. Vine, Drummond H. Mathews and Lorence W. Morley. Holmes was the first scientist to propose the plate tectonics theory. In 1929 Holmes proposed his theory that the Earth’s crust was broken up into pieces he called plates and these plates are constantly moving causing continental drift (Lecher, 2018). Following Holmes’ theory, Hess developed his theory of what is now called ‘sea floor spreading’ (Cloos, 2018). This is where two plates are forced apart forming Ocean ridges, this theory was further supported with the invention of sonar, which allowed ocean depths to be measured (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2018). In 1963 three scientists; Vine, Mathews and Morley, worked together to produce their paper titled "Magnetic Anomalies over Ocean Ridges,” this paper contained the discovery of "parallel zebra stripes of normal and reversed magnetism" running parallel to sea ridges. This was because during the solidification process the molten rock "captured the magnetic orientation of the ferro-magnetic minerals while spreading to form new ocean floor on either side of the ridge” forming the parallel lines of normal and reversed magnetism. After centuries of research and theories we finally know how the great continents made their way