Plate Tectonics
As a graduate student Fred Vine's Ph.D was 'magnetism in the seafloor', on which he worked along with his supervisor Drummond Matthews. Having met Harry Hess he was fully aware of his theories on sea floor spreading where the ocean bed effectively acts as a 'conveyor belt' moving away from the central ridge. Vine's work, along with that of Drummond Matthews and Lawrence Morley of the Geological Survey of Canada, helped put the variations in the magnetic properties of the ocean crust into proper context (Vine–Matthews–Morley hypothesis). Specifically Vine and Matthews supported Dietz’s (Nature 1961) idea that sea floor spreading was occurring at mid ocean ridges. Vine and Matthews showed that basalt created at a mid-ocean ridge records earth’s current magnetic field polarity (and strength), thus turning Hess's theoretical 'conveyor belt' into a 'tape recorder'. Furthermore, they showed that magnetic reversals, suggested by Allan Cox (Nature 1963), can be seen as parallel strips as you travel perpendicularly away from the ridge crest.
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