Ocean Floor Drilling Magnetism

A test of the hypothesis of sea floor spreading was provided by studies of the earth s magnetism.

Ocean floor drilling magnetism. One stripe with normal polarity and the adjoining stripe with reversed polarity. This 469 foot 143 meter ship can drill in water that is 27 018 feet 8 234 meters deep. Brittanica learning materials customer service 310. One key idea was that new ocean crust was created at ridges.

The ocean floor a map of the ocean floor shows a. Glomar challenger oceanographic drilling and coring vessel active from 1968 to 1983 the exploratory ship of the deep sea drilling project later the ocean drilling project. Scientific ocean drilling which started 50 years ago has yielded insights into climate change geohazards and the key conditions. Odp it was equipped with a drilling derrick 43 metres 140 feet high and was capable of drilling more than 1 700 metres 5 570 feet into the ocean floor it investigated some 624 sites in the atlantic pacific and.

The minerals contained in the rocks are oriented opposite to the magnetic field. Ocean floor drilling continues today with a larger and more technologically advanced ship the joides resolution. By using the magnetometer the magnetic polarity will be shown through a timescale that contains the normal and a reverse polarity. In the 20th century the magnetic survey was conducted in the mid ocean ridge in order to investigate evidence of sea floor spreading.

When scientific ocean drilling began in 1968 the theory of plate tectonics was a subject of active debate. Hydrophones towed near the surface record sound that bounces back from the ocean floor to create a 3 d image of geological formations that hint at oil or gas deposits deep in the seabed. The ocean floor holds unique information about earth s history. The measurement of the magnetization of a magnetic material like a ferromagnet is an example a compass is one such device one that measures the direction of an ambient magnetic field in this case the earth s magnetic field.

It can dangle 30 030 feet 9 150 meters of drill pipe through the hole in the center of the ship called the moon pool. When these magnetic patterns were mapped over a wide region the ocean floor showed a zebra like pattern. This feat has been compared to using a sharp ended wire to dig a hole into a sidewalk from the top of the empire state building. Alternating stripes of magnetically different rock were laid out in rows on either side of the mid ocean ridge.

The glomar challenger sent drilling pipes through water six kilometers deep to drill holes in the ocean floor.