Mantle convection as the engine of continental drift (Holmes)
Convección del manto como motor de la deriva continental (Holmes)
- Date
- 1929-1931 · confidence high
- Place
- Durham, England, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Arthur Holmes
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Holmes proposed that heat from radioactive decay drives convection currents in the mantle, which would drag continents and pull them apart where they rise. It gave Wegener's drift the physical mechanism it lacked.
It was presented in 1929 to the Geological Society of Glasgow and published in 1931. Holmes regarded it as speculation; it was accepted with Hess and Dietz three decades later.
What it led to
- the mechanism of seafloor spreading (Hess, 1962)
- models of mantle convection