Four Elite Geologic Formations for Your Enjoyment
The waterfalls version of this article went over pretty well so we’re back with geologic features. These can be insane — even more so than a nice waterfall.
You may have heard of some of these before, but if you don’t know, now you know. Time to appreciate some wild nature.
Giant’s Causeway
The Giant’s Causeway is a trip. Located on the shore in Northern Ireland, it’s basically a series of rocks…formed in perfect hexagon shape.
By nature.
I challenge you to go outside your front door and find any 2 pebbles that look the same.
But at the Giant’s Causeway, you have hundreds, if not thousands, of hexagonal pillars formed in spitting image.
If you haven’t seen it I’ll drop a picture before we continue.
Ok, so they’re a bit different. They may have chipped a bit over the 50–60 million years since they got here.
But, how did they get here?
The working theory is that lava oozed through fissures in the surface, forming rock when they reached the air, resulting in this formation.
However, if you’ve been to Hawaii, you know that lava doesn’t just… do that.
It’ll form like any old rock if you let it.
So why hexagons? Was God going through a geometry phase?
Not exactly.
Scientists have deduced that the rock, which is basalt, must have cooled between 1544 and 1634 degrees Fahrenheit to fracture in such a way that when it did cool off, it cooled like this.
Something about molten fractures and certain temperatures makes it do that.
The competing theory, proposed by Irish legend, is that Irish giant Finn MacCool built the causeway to go to Scotland and fight a rival.
There’s no way to prove or disprove either theory as of yet, so we’ll move on from here.
Cave of the Crystals
This one may be a little less well known than the Giant’s Causeway, but I just googled pictures of it and oh wow.
This is gonna be a fun one to unpack.
The Cave of the Crystals is located in Naica, Mexico, a little bit south of the border of the US.
These crystals were discovered relatively recently, in 2000, by brothers Juan and Pedro Sanchez while drilling in the mine.
I can only imagine their faces when they saw this shit.
These are Selenite crystals, and as we can see, they are much larger than any human ever. There is another cave adjacent to this one called the Cave of Swords, containing smaller but similar crystals.
Sometimes rumored to have been used by Finn MacCool in his fight with…just kidding.
The Naica mines are located on a fault above an underground magma chamber.
This magma heats the ground water, causing a chemical reaction resulting in the formation of these enormous crystals.
In fact, in 2015, the cave went back underwater, meaning that as I write this the crystals are growing even more.
The cave itself is too hot for humans to survive for over 10 minutes, so just for scientists to get in, they need to wear refrigerated suits like some kind of space aliens.
The place is bananas.
Arches National Park
Arches, too, is one of those spots. Just how does it work that giant rock formations just have holes in the middle?
The park is famous for the Delicate Arch, seen in approximately 1 million pictures as well as on the Utah license plate.
But the park is home to over 2,000 natural sandstone arches.
That’s a lot of arches.
These arches have a rich geologic history leading to their formation.
Over the years, the terrain experienced a wide array of different topographical climates, causing different types of rock to be deposited.
Including weaker salt based rocks and harder sandstone.
When the area turned into a desert, the weaker rocks eroded, leaving large “fins” of sandstone remaining, sticking high into the sky.
Wind and water over time have put in work on these fins.
Some just collapse when they reach their breaking point.
In others, which have the right amount of stability, the middle will fall out, creating the arches we know and love today.
You have ones such as the Delicate Arch, which is picturesque but on the smaller side, but you also have ones such as the Landscape Arch, which is a bonafide bridge that looks like it should be on the planet from Avatar.
Except in the desert and not the jungle.
Arches National Park is really more of a drive through than many of the other US parks, but you can’t shake that unreal scenery.
Certainly an elite geological formation of Earth.
World of the Ice Giants
This sounds like something literally out of a video game. And it probably is.
That’s not the one we’re talking about here.
Earth’s World of the Ice Giants is in a cave 40km south of Salzburg, Austria.
And it’s earned its name for sure.
The name in Austrian is Eisreisenwelt, and the cave itself is located inside a mountain in the Alps. It’s a natural ice & limestone cave.
The cave was first “discovered” by a scientist in 1879, although locals knew about it.
They thought it was an entrance to hell.
The cave is only open from May to October, and even then, the temperature is usually below freezing inside.
This makes sense as otherwise the ice would melt.
The cave is incredibly large, penetrating 42 km deep into the mountain.
The wild ice formations came to be as a result of melting snow from the mountain above draining into the cave, and then subsequently freezing upon reaching the chilly interior.
Additionally, due to the open cave entrance, winter winds blow snow into the cave and contribute to the icy temperature, further encouraging freezing.
What results are formations like this.
Upon further review, don’t actually think that last one’s from the cave.
Regardless, these are only some of Earth’s elite geologic formations. Nature is wild when you just leave it to its devices and circle back a few million years later.
Just gives you some natural appreciation for the way things are, and the way they came to be.
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