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Seafloor Spreading & Magnetic Stripes

Interactive 3D seafloor-spreading simulator: watch new oceanic crust form at a mid-ocean ridge, split symmetrically, subside as it cools, and freeze in Earth's reversing magnetic field to build the striped bathymetric record real ships tow magnetometers to read.

Climate, Ecology & Environment3DModerate60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 2D version

This simulator models the mechanism behind one of plate tectonics' most decisive pieces of evidence: as new oceanic crust forms continuously at a mid-ocean ridge and splits symmetrically to either side, each strip cools and freezes in whatever direction Earth's magnetic field happened to point at that moment. Because the field reverses polarity at irregular intervals, the result is a pattern of parallel magnetic stripes running mirror-symmetric away from the ridge axis — exactly what shipborne magnetometers detect over real ridges. Adjust the spreading rate to see how it stretches or compresses the same reversal history into wide or narrow stripes, tune how often the field flips, and watch the crust subside with age following the same square-root-of-age cooling relation geologists use to date the seafloor.

⚙ Under the hood

Watch new oceanic crust form symmetrically at a mid-ocean ridge, subside as it cools, and freeze in Earth's reversing magnetic field to build the striped magnetic pattern that proved seafloor spreading.

seafloor spreadingplate tectonicspaleomagnetismmid-ocean ridgemarine geologygeomagnetic reversal

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install