Vine–Matthews–Morley hypothesis

The 1963 explanation that magnetic stripes on the seafloor record reversals of Earth's magnetic field as new ocean crust forms and spreads from mid-ocean ridges.

Seafloor spreading: Harry Hess's 1962 proposal that new oceanic crust forms at mid-ocean ridges and moves outward toward trenches. The hypothesis supplied the testable magnetic prediction that confirmed Hess's otherwise speculative mechanism.
Curie point: The temperature, about 580 °C for magnetite, below which magnetic minerals lock in the ambient field direction. Basalt records the field's polarity only as it cools through this temperature at the ridge.
Confirmation by the Eltanin-19 profile: A 1965-66 magnetic profile across the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge matching predicted reversal patterns almost perfectly. The match with Pitman and Heirtzler's reversal timescale convinced most skeptics.
Maurice Hill: Cambridge marine geophysicist who led the department where Vine and Matthews worked. His survey cruises and department supplied the data culture in which the idea formed.
Magnetometer surveys of the ocean floor: Postwar towed magnetometer profiling that revealed striped magnetic anomalies parallel to mid-ocean ridges. The striped anomalies were the unexplained data the hypothesis was constructed to explain.
Geomagnetic reversal: A flip of Earth's magnetic polarity, occurring irregularly roughly every few hundred thousand years. Successive reversals paint alternating normal and reversed stripes as crust drifts away from the ridge.
Plate tectonics: The theory that Earth's rigid outer shell is broken into moving plates interacting at their boundaries. The hypothesis made seafloor spreading measurable, giving plate tectonics its quantitative foundation.
Edward Bullard: Cambridge geophysicist who championed seafloor spreading and supported the hypothesis despite initial skepticism in Britain. His advocacy helped the idea gain a hearing at Cambridge and beyond.
Fred Vine: Cambridge geophysicist who, with Drummond Matthews, published the hypothesis in Nature in 1963. Co-author of the 1963 Nature paper that tied magnetic stripes to spreading and reversals.
Thermoremanent magnetization: Permanent magnetization acquired by igneous rock as it cools through the Curie point in an ambient field. This is the physical property that makes each stripe a fossil compass reading.

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