Theory of Continental Drift: Impact of Alfred Lothar Wegener, Frederick Vine, Harry Hess

Topics:	Continental Drift
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Alfred Lothar Wegener

Biography

Born in 1980 in Berlin – son of an orphanage director
As a child became fascinated with Greenland
Graduated from UNI of Berlin with PHD in astronomy
Instead of continuing with astronomy, pursued meteorology – worked for Royal Prussian Aeronautical Observatory in Berlin.
In 1906, he finally got a chance to go to Greenland – this would be the first of four trips he took to Greenland
Upon return from first Greenland trip in 1908, accepted position at UNI of Marburg to tech meteorology
During his teaching, discovered coastlines of East Africa and South America fit together – this sparked an interest in whether all the continents were once all joined together
Died on his 4th trip to Greenland at age 50

In 1912 Wegener Proposed that the all the Continents were once a single land mass and became the first person to propose the theory of continental drift. He had physical evidence, the continents fitting together like jigsaw pieces and he also had fossil evidence of the continents moving. One such piece of fossil evidence was tropical plant life growing in Greenland. However, he didn’t have a reason for why and how the Earth’s crust moved. Therefore, Wegener’s theory wasn’t taken seriously and would take another 30 years for the discovery of plate tectonics and sea floor spreading to support his ideas.

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Frederick Vine

Biography:

Born in 1939 in London, attended the Latymer School
All of his university training was spent at Cambridge – received a Bachelor of Science in Physics at St. Johns College
PHD awarded in 1965
After his graduation, he was appointed as a geology instructor
Went to USA between 1967 and 1970, spent his time at Princeton University where he would be an assistant professor

Frederick Vine got famous off work he did very early on in his career. It was at the time he was still a grad student that he released a paper with Drummond Mathews titled ‘Magnetic Anomalies over Oceanic ridges’ and this work built on the ideas of several researchers, one of which being Alfred Wegener. Vine and Mathews put forward the idea that if the seafloor is the youngest rock, which spreads from the mid ocean ridges then each time there is new molten rock which emerges from these ridges it will push aside the already cooled rock that came before it. The evidence for this discovery lay in the molten rock which contained iron in the form of magnetite. When the molten rock cools/crystalizes the crystals in the rock tend to line themselves up with the earth’s magnetic field. To further support their claim the earth’s magnetic field does occasionally switch its poles (the north pole -> turns into the south pole) so therefore the rocks located on the seafloor should have a pattern of crystals that resembles somewhat of zebra stripes. As it turns out they do in-fact have an alternating pattern of Crystals which led Frederick Vine to conduct further studies about the time period of these pole reversals which turned out to be around every half a million years. In 1966 Vine and Mathews conducted even further research to predict the patterned stipes on the seafloor and what they should look like using the magnetic strata which ended with their prediction being right. This successful experiment also confirmed Alfred Wegener’s continental drift theory whilst also confirming sea floor spreading.

Harry Hess

Biography:

Born in 1906 in New York City, father member of the New York Stock Exchange
Went to Yale University in 1923, majored in electrical engineering first, later changed to geology
Graduated with bachelor of science in 1927, then worked for two years as an exploration geologist in Zambia
After his time in Zambia he returned to the states and began graduate studies at Princeton University – got PHD in 1932
After this he taught for a year at Rutgers University, at the same time did research for another year in Geophysical Lab of the Carnegie Institution in Washington
in 1934, he married his wife and in the same year joined the staff of Princeton
Joined the navy in 1934 and after the war ended became captain of Cape Johnson – A troop transport ship
This posting sparked his interest in the sea floor and his sounder recordings he took as captain discovered flat topped undersea mountains (Guyots)

Harry Hess noticed that the further away the Guyots were to pacific ridge, the deeper the mountains were. Harry Hess used Wegner’s knowledge and found out instead of the continents pushing through the sea floor instead he concluded that the sea floor was moving. Hess was of the belief that the mid-ocean rift valley was a weak spot found in the Earth’s crust where magma boils up from the Earth’s mantle. Hess also found that when the magma rock rises to the surface and hardens it pushes the seafloor that is already forming a ridge on the mid-ocean rift apart, starting a conveyer belt like cycle. When the older seafloor gets pushed away it pushes away the even older sea floor which sinks into deep trenches where it then gets absorbed into the mantle again. This essentially means the seafloor is always moving and pushing outwards but never expanding. To summarise Hess found the mechanism that causes continental drift – the sea floor moving. He also discovered molten rock form and finally that oceans grew from the centre.

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