Vine-Matthews-Morley Magnetic Striping Study

In 1963, the British geologists Fred Vine and Drummond Matthews, together with the Canadian geologist Lawrence Morley working independently, explained a puzzling pattern of magnetized rock in symmetric stripes on either side of mid-ocean ridges as a record of the Earth's periodic magnetic field reversals imprinted on new seafloor as it forms and spreads outward. Because the ages of these magnetic reversals were already known from dated volcanic rocks on land, matching the width of each oceanic stripe to a known reversal let geologists calculate the rate at which the seafloor was spreading. The study supplied decisive, independently verifiable evidence for seafloor spreading and was a key piece of evidence that converted plate tectonics from a contested hypothesis into the accepted framework of modern geology.