The strange geology of Mount Everest

Viewed on its north face as in this image, the peak of Mount Everest looks different from rocks below it. The pale, mostly-snow-covered layer is known colloquially as Everest’s Yellow Band. On top of that is a darker layer that is covered by thinner-bedded units.

This sequence describes one of Geology’s most commonly told stories. At the top of Mount Everest,the highest mountain on Earth, sits a sequence of bedded limestones, formed beneath the ocean over 450 million years ago in the Ordovician. Rocks deposited in the ocean sit at the top of Earth’s tallest peak. There are trilobites up there.

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“They’re limiting the playtesters to type A3 V stars, so the games will all end before the Sun consumes the Earth.”
https://xkcd.com/2061/

(Source: xkcd.com)

The Los Angeles basin

The megalopolis of LA occupies a plain filled with coastal sand sediments bounded by mountains on three sides and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Roughly 80x40 km across, it is cut by a series of fault zones that pose a risk to the city, as well as creating the sort of traps that concentrated migrating crude oil into accessible deposits.

The basin started subsiding in the Miocene, some 15 million years back, and up to 10 km of coastal sands from the ocean and rivers were deposited in the rapidly forming tectonic hole. Initially the future LA was underwater, but was uplifted in the endless complex tectonic patterns of the west coast of America around 5 million years ago. Nowadays, its centre is near the confluence of the Los Angeles and Hondo rivers.

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The Teton Fault

I absolutely adore this view of the Teton mountain range in northwestern Wyoming. The tallest summit in this frame, Grand Teton, rises to a height of 4199 meters, with a prominence of nearly 2000 meters above the valley to the east known as Jackson Hole.

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Lake Baikal

All lakes bear the stamp of their own individuality, molded by their particular setting, the hue of their water, the mood of their climate and unique ecology. Many exude such a strong ‘spirit of place’ that they are even considered sacred. The blue waters of Lake Baikal in Siberia are no exception.

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happy-geology:

月山から北への俯瞰：東北本州の背弧側の地殻変動　南北方向の東側あがりの断層群が出羽丘陵の隆起をもたらし庄内平野との地形的対照を形成した　西側の酒田衝上断層群は活断層の庄内平野東縁断層帯の一部であり，広くは北由利衝上断層系（延長200 km）の一部でもある

A panoramic view from Mt. Gassan to the north, showing post-Miocene, and still active at present, crustal shortening in the backarc area in Yamagata, northeast Honshu, Japan. A series of N-S trending faults has given cumulative vertical displacement of more than 2 km by which the present-day Dewa Hills was uplifted and dissected until Middle Miocene rocks are exposed. The western part of the fault series, the Sakata thrust faults, is a part of the Kita-Yuri thrust system, one of the largest fault system in northeast Honshu with its total horizontal extension of up to 200 km. For scale, the distance between the Japan Sea coast and the Shinjo Basin ca. 40 km.

kevinsheephotography:

Thingvellir in Iceland, where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates move apart

(via raggyrecordingcom)