Posted on 04/29/2021 9:31:37 AM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal
A group of University of Wyoming professors and students has identified an unusual belt of igneous rocks that stretches for over 2,000 miles from British Columbia, Canada, through Idaho, Montana, Nevada, southeast California and Arizona to Sonora, Mexico.
“Geoscientists usually associate long belts of igneous rocks with chains of volcanoes at subduction zones, like Mount Shasta, Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainer,” says Jay Chapman, an assistant professor in UW’s Department of Geology and Geophysics.
“What makes this finding so interesting and mysterious is that this belt of igneous rocks is located much farther inland, away from the edge of the continent, and doesn’t contain any evidence for producing volcanoes. In fact, all of the melting to generate the igneous rocks originally took place deep underground, five to 10 miles beneath the surface.”
The new scientific paper is a result of a special course taught by Simone Runyon, an assistant professor in UW’s Department of Geology and Geophysics, and Chapman. Runyon, six UW graduate students and one undergraduate student, who took part in the course, are co-authors of the paper.
“It was really fascinating to start with a scientific question in a classroom, then collect and analyze data, and eventually publish our results,” says Cody Pridmore, a UW graduate student from Orange, Calif., and co-author of the paper. “It’s a process most college students don’t get to experience.”
Learn more about the geology of the Pacific Northwest here…
Possible origins One clue to the origin of the belt of igneous rocks is that the rocks chiefly formed 80 million to 50 million years ago, during a mountain-building event called the Laramide orogeny.
“The Laramide orogeny created most of the major mountain ranges we have in Wyoming, and the name actually comes from the Laramie Range,” Chapman says. “Although there are no igneous rocks of this type and age present in those mountains, we suspect that the tectonic processes that created the mountains also contributed to melting Earth’s crust.”
The researchers have several working hypotheses about what caused the rocks to melt. One hypothesis is that water infiltrated the deep crust.
“The geochemistry of these rocks indicates that melting may have occurred at relatively low temperatures, below 800 degrees Celsius,” says Jessie Shields, a Ph.D. student at UW from Minneapolis, Minn., who is working to solve this mystery. “That is still very hot, but not hot enough to produce very large volumes of magma. Water lowers the melting point of rocks, similar to how salt lowers the melting point of ice, and could increase the amount of magma generated.”
This work has implications for what causes rocks to melt and where specific types of magmas can be found.
“Many of the igneous systems in the study area contain economically important ore deposits,” says Runyon, who specializes in ore deposits. “Understanding the large-scale igneous processes that form these provinces helps us to better understand how ore deposits form and to better explore for natural resources.”
It’s simple, they are Karma rocks.
What goes around comes around............................
Why not, everything else is....................
“Water lowers the melting point of rocks, similar to how salt lowers the melting point of ice”
A flood.
“The Laramide orogeny...”
They were doing that crap even back then?
The headline of the article isn’t very clear. It seems these rocks melted some 80 million years ago, but are now solid.
Yeah. Cause if it was, it wouldn’t be an the origeny, but instead, something with three fewer letters.
Mega-flooding. The weight of the ice sheets must have played hell with the tectonic plates.
I saw rocks melting in my back yard and MT Rainer was laughing in the background.
It appears they’ve found an extremely sensitive zone of the earth.
Yellowstone?
The Great Lakes are still rebounding.
Not a nba reference.
I know! Global Warming! Where is my grant money?
There’s DIAMONDS in them thar hills! (Most likely!) :)
Ah... have you been eating funny little sugar cubes?
No, I’m diabetic.
The governmentiswatchingme though.
Who cares, they are just rock. They have no feelings, no sense of belonging and have limited societal value except to look at in awe at the mountains that are formed out of them, or to be crushed for gravel for concrete or asphalt.
In my geology class we went on a field trip in southern Oregon so our professor could show us the difference between volcanic rock formations and rock formations formed from earthquakes and basically that every hill or mountain was the result of earthquake movement or volcanic activity.
I wonder about the scripture that say; “Hell Has enlarged herself” Could it be that the churning core is not a perfect constant but fluctuates and is actually slowing eating away the earth’s crust from the inside out? What would the effects be? An increase in earthquakes and volcanic activity? If this is indeed happening, did God create this to happen as part of his plan for the end time?
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