Ophiolite (ophiolite complex) A sequence of rock types, consisting of deep-sea sediments lying above basaltic pillow lavas, dykes, gabbro, and ultramafic peridotite. Some are the remnants of main oceanic crust, others of crust formed in back-arc basins.
To tread the vastness,
of basin and range,
seeking the truth of that which was,
to walk in deep time,
From range to basin
seeking the beginning of an age,
and the last of an archeon,
the shield of the earth,
bones on which we dwell,
the bones of the continent, 2 billion years old
peaks melt as they arise,
great heights are youth,
as an Appalachian range dies,
a relic of the past,
greater than our sum,
sutures and overfolds
a vast hot spot,
Yellowstone to Raton pass,
as the shield passes west,
the great plume rises still,
a real time view of geology at work
to the youngest of lands,
the active western shore,
slashing north to close the door,
and compression is the future,
Island arcs in the sky
ancient island arcs break,
upon this vast zone,
tumbling and rising to heights,
only to fall into the sea,
young mountains
these lands have changed,
and will continue,
through deep time,
as it ever was, to be washed away,
terrane. A fault-bounded area or region which is characterized by a stratigraphy, structural style, and geologic history distinct from those of adjacent areas, and which is not related to those areas by unconformable contacts or facies changes. This usage has recently become frequent in studies of orogenic belts in which terranes can have origins as accretionary wedges, island arcs, and microplates. Initially, ‘displaced’ or ‘allochthonous’ was used to qualify the word ‘terrane’ and to distinguish such terranes from merely ‘suspect terranes’, but all three qualifiers are falling into disuse.
The arc island hypothosis seeks to answer for the accretion of amongst other places Southern California, and the great disparity of rock and minerals in the landscape. The mountains are very young yet carry rock that is well over a billion years old: how did it get there? The answer could be island arcs created over hotspots much like Japan or Samoa were created and the virgin basalt from the mantle was transported by the Pacific Plate to the North American Plate: easy, right?
As the arcs cross the hemisphere they contact the front edge of the North American Plate. However, the former is moving almost due north while the latter is moving west, hence the friction that is the San Andreas. These movements have occured for nearly 500 million years, resulting in the coast ranges and small cinder cones, culminating with the Sierra Nevada: a grand, young accretion of many unique terranes, far older than the mountains themselves.
It’s a First out with your cock out kind of night.
Also, shout-out to Sean for doing some quality Firsting 101 in the AM links.
ignore..
What is Firsted can not be un-Firsted.
Poser
No one can rationally question my devotion to Firsting.
Nope your irrational attachment to this shtick cannot be understood by anyone rational.
^ This.
OCD is generally characterized by a dopamine release when performing the compulsive action.
Declaring the desire to be First the manifestation of a personality disorder is the most second thing ever.
Deep time is so long we think of terms like 370 as in 370 million years
And what we have learned is so recent – plate tectonics, the scablands of the Columbia basin – these have only been worked out the last 2 or 3 generations.
When I was a geology undergraduate freshman in 1978 the primary teaching was the “new geology” of plate tectonics, but they still taught us several weeks (and a test) on the “old geology” as well, just in case.
Young Earth Theory?
Have you not read “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”?
Plate tectonics was a huge paradigm shift in geology. It seems simple and intuitive now but there was a well developed system of geology that explained many terranes. It was elegant, and wrong. But the ocean depths were not well mapped, the methods to absolute date rocks was just being developed, and the idea that continents bounce around like billiard balls was out there.
But there it was. The ocean depths show structures that can most easily be explained with movement. Precision mapping clearly shows movement up, down, and sideways. The oldest rocks in the oceans are very young compared to continental rocks. The plates do move. The Pacific Plate, and Hawaii, is scooting along around 3 inches a year. Out here it is an easy movement. Along the edge of the NA plate it doesn’t move freely because it is dragging sideways along an edge of a plate being shoved into the Pacific Plate. It binds up, building energy, that is released in movements known as earthquakes.
Given geologic time the original Rockies grow taller than the current set, are eroded flat, spend 100’s of millions of years under shallow oceans, and then are thrust up again. The Appalachian mountains rival the Himalayas during the Mesozoic, but with the opening of the Atlantic Ocean, start to erode away to today’s scenic molehills.
It’s rather fascinating. Don’t get started on the timelines of the universe. That is some seriously deep time extending into both directions.
Gee, why didn’t you write this?
I’m a bit younger so essentially always had plate tectonics. Fascinating how quickly that changed.
YOU gave it the force of poetry Yusef. I can tell a bit of the story, but you can capture the soul of the geology. That muse skipped me by.
Walt Disney World’s Wilderness Lodge (an homage to the National Park lodges of the American west) has a “geologic fireplace” which is supposed to represent the strata of the Grand Canyon. At over four stories tall, it’s quite the sight in person.
My thoughts when I saw it for the first time? Ain’t that the schist.
Ha! No schist!
Still searching for the ashtray
FIgured as much. Don’t worry, I won’t take you for granite.
I’m a gneiss guy like that.
Perfection is basaltic
Don’t be breccia my dreams.
Excellent Yusef. Thanks for this
Loved reading Annals of the Former World. California is as weird geologically as it is socially.
Yes! You know..,..
The Central Valley is so flat that it defies explanation – particularly as a result of the same forces that produced both the Sierras and the coastal range!
It isn’t flat, just growing, west to east
I figured you were more into Anals of the Former World.
No kink shaming!
LOL epic troll… and the Dems took the bait. 😂🤣
So they are vying hard to be the stupid party?
Insert *That’s bait* gif here
Absolutely top shelf trolling. “Well, are you going to repudiate your history of supporting slavery, or not?” is the political equivalent of “When did you stop beating your wife.”
Geology and poetry.
Great job Yusef.
Thank you Sir
I was wondering from the title how you would primer the active half of the continent. Poetry. That did it well. Bravo.
Arm of the DOD calls for restricting members of the military’s access to firearms. In the name of preventing suicides.
I’m going to skip over the obvious and just point out further that the people running things really have no fucking clue what sort of people serve in the military and what to do to attract them to the job. Or, they are openly hostile to those people and have some warped fantasy that they can build the military with some other kind of person who in reality has no actual fucking desire to join.
The only trannies joining the military were in it for the tax payer funded all paid transition Obama offered.
They’ve got pasty old white guys mouthing platitudes about “white supremacy”. The whole department is rotten to the core. Started by Obama; completed by Biden.
I didn’t need to buy one. I had unrestricted access to a company’s worth of firearms and basic load of ammunition.
This was another thought of mine. You are then putting people who may be unhinged and bitter in a position where they are armed and in a large group to act when they’re training.
They’re going to have access to firearms if they are in the military.
Unless they disarm the military, which doesn’t seem quite so far-fetched.
OTOH, they’ll need all those weapons when they turn them on the American populace.
That seems incredibly stupid.
Or no fucking clue how restricted firearms already are in today’s military.
Time, we can measure it but it’s transitory. So difficult to comprehend. Humanoids have been here such a short period and made changes, mostly on the surface. Egotistical to believe that we can change the climate.
Thanks, Yusef, now I’ll be pondering all night.
Sir, deep time counts, our short time here is trivial, but let’s not waste it,
My existence will change everything. Maybe you, sir, are trivial, but I assure you that I am not.
The First That Shall Change Everything will lead to a great…re-ordering.
This.
But I don’t think the people in charge actually believe any of it – only their foot-soldiers do. And the left figured out how to use them to amass fortune and power.
Deep time laughs at climate, get a planet, ya know?
I was told if I like my doctor, I can keep my doctor. The party of The Lightbringer wouldn’t lie to me.
Lovely.
The American West provides some awe-inspiring landscapes. Even the drive from Pahrump to Mercury passed through several distinctly different mountain types, and times. I don’t know how many millions of years apart one end was from the other, but it was beautiful in a desolate sort of way.
In fact all of the mountain ranges that you drove through had been there for time and memorial and all the fill that you see is actually from the great kraton of the Northeast which would be Yellowstone in down to Raton pass
The west side of the continent is very alive tectonically, in fact California will actually fall into the sea and the new coastline will be somewhere in the neighborhood of Utah in about 50 million years,
Cheers
Make Otisburg great again!
HE needs to keep up on her new geologic hazards in da new neighborhood.
The classic is the next time Mt Rainer pulls of a St Helens type eruption and loses a flank. It has already lost part of the east side once (hence the large glaciers) so that side is suspect and the river valleys are aimed at the Seattle area. It is dormant but still has enough heat that fumaroles at the summit (14, 410 ft) create breaks in the snow, and a snow cave with a small lake in the bottom- all in the summit crater and rim.
The second is a massive rupture along the Juan de Fuca plate. It is sliding under the NA Plate (subducting) and the melt creates the Cascade Range from Mt Lassen (CA) to Mt Garibaldi (BC).
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one
Mt Baker erupting is a lessor worry. It had a small eruptive sequence ~35 years ago which was akin to a polite burp behind your hand at a party.
This might just set up well Q’s photo essay on the Grand Tetons?
Lava flows are only part of it. Lahars are where it’s at.
https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/mount-rainier/lahars-and-debris-flows-mount-rainier
Good lecture on that subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMCXHewLIWc
Carl Sagan’s take on deep time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln8UwPd1z20
Studies have changed the Big Bang to 13.8BY not the 15BY he uses. Our planet’s history is short enough that the 1.2BY is of a little change.
The Grand Prismatic is one of the coolest things I’ve seen IRL.
And I love love living near my destruction.
Thanks, Yusef!
For our Mountain and Pacific time zone brethren. Take a look at the western sky not long after sunset. Jupiter and Venus are in a conjunction (close apparent approach) tonight. Check again tomorrow and you’ll see that the two have traded places in the sky. Venus is (apparently) getting higher and Jupiter lower (again apparently).
You may not care bout the planet, it doesn’t matter
So Jimmy Carter is in hospice.
All I’mma say is he struck me as a very nice man and I admire his work with Habitat for Humanity.
I will respectfully disagree. He was a bitter old coot and a massive antisemite.
Hm. I’ll take your word for that, then because I was a kid during his administration. I know he was a fuckup, but that’s all I know.
He could have been a great ex-president. Instead, as Spud said, he was bitter and was or became an antisemite.
To choose the warm death,
It is favorable,
Firsters never die, Yusef.
This is of no comfort to you.
I cannot die, I just cross time, try to keep up young one,
I just learned that Gavin Newsome’s wife testified in Florida against Harvey Weinstein. Described his penis on the stand down to every last detail, and accused him of rape.
I wonder how many times Newsome took money from Harvey, shook hands with him etc.? And Democrats play stupid when it comes to his sexual misdeeds.
And she stayed in the hotel room with him after the “rape” because in her words you don’t say no to Harvey. She was scared. And then she encouraged her husband to ask him for campaign contributions. Because of course you ask your husband to go to your alleged rapist for money for his campaign for governor.
If I recall correctly, the jury acquitted on the count related to her.
You can’t rape the willing.
If the world is going to shit I do not want to finish in Michigan I’ll take it in California thanks very much,
,
For you, Yusef
https://youtu.be/Yy57Xdk9u0o
“California Fleein’“
Mo, I live the dream now, warm, the people are beautiful, it’s warm, I live in peace, it’s warm,
I deserve this,
Cass Elliott died of a heart attack
That was good. One nit pick. It wasn’t the Beach Boys who did the song. As a wise Glib pointed out, “If Mama Cass had given Karen Carpenter that ham sandwich they both would be alive today.”
I did notice that.
As for Karen Carpenter: I was watching a doc on her today and just flat-out bawled. That woman had the most perfect voice that ever sang ever in the history of mankind.
Nah, Babs forever
Karen was undoubtedly great. Cass had a different talent of just belting out the words in her own wonderful manner + I don’t remember the exact details but the ham sandwich thing is an ugly slur IIRC.
Heart failure not sammiches, still too heavy, poor dear.
Don’t forget the wonders of Marilynn McCoo’s voice. She can still bring it on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CrVgklfs_A
From “It Takes a Thief”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETNM6x1xfuU
How hubristic to think that humans could alter the face of the planet..
we are such fools we live in such small time we don’t even capture the grandeur that is the planet and its shape and it’s changing nature, suffer the fools.
I’d like to thank Montana for the rich soil found around here.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_floods
This is a rather meh flash flood,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORJtxkuD62E
Now try to scale up in your mind the extent and scale of the Missoula Floods.
Try to remember some love for the Columbia Flood Basalts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQhjkemEyUo
Very good lecturer. The first few minutes give an idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erratic_Rock_State_Natural_Site#Geology
Moving boulders from Canada.
I’ll throw these in here
https://mountain-press.com/collections/roadside-geology
I have a few of those, great reference,
Got six of them as well.
Nice recommendation. Just bought the Wisconsin one.
Ditto for Arizona.
Montana
https://youtu.be/smZA9Jv3qH0
Thanks for the article Yusef.
Geology was one of my favorite college classes. Been fascinated with the subject ever since.
It’s hard not to be fascinated by it! Here are these sturdy stone structures that have been around for time spans we can’t quite comprehend, and yet you can see how mighty forces have folded them and mixed them like cake batter!
It seems we are slightly less stupid than I thought.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/nearly-three-quarters-of-californians-dont-want-newsom-to-run-for-president/?utm_source=recirc-&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=native-latest&utm_term=second
Putting those poll results together, there are a lot of Californians who approve of his administration so much they want to keep him in CA rather than have him go to DC.
It’s a balmy 49 degrees in Mukilteo but very windy and a little damp.
Nevertheless, I’m sitting in the hotel Horton outside, warm from the shoulders down. The wind is getting louder, but it’s a pleasant white noise, and I can sink a little further into the water if I need to.
My feet are loving the jet massage.
Soooo nice. I enjoy hot tubs in cold weather.Never feel overheated.
The hotel Horton? WTF? That was the suggestion for “hot tub”?
Whatever.
Wait til you get a real Chinook.
Morning Glibs!
😀
Mornin’
Yusef, I like the pictures.
Salsa dance last night didn’t go all that well.
Off to the gym.
Morning.
Mornin folks! Year over year our property value has jumped 25%. We’re rich! Rich like Croesus! Fucking assholes. It’s all about the tax rate and it is infuriating. If anything the value should have gone down because the actual lot is not being cared for like it once was. Blatant fucking robbery.
Festus!!! Ermagerd!!! How the heck are you???
Just gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme fried chicken
I don’t care for chicken and waffles. I will pass on the ice cream version.
Quick, somebody politicize this. Oh, it’s March now.
Still racist because chicken and waffles are still a black food and this is cultural appropriation at its worst. White slavers at Baskin using the black man’s food to make a buck.
Have they even given any money to BLM?
Stop the stereotype. Not all women like chicken and waffles.
No meat flavored ice creams are allowed in this household.
Strictly fish flavored for Lent, right?
Not ice cream but still:
https://mcphee.com/products/sardine-candy-canes
Bleeeech!
::adds to next year’s Christmas gift list for BIL::
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/eskimo-ice-cream-akutaq-pike-fish-alaska-dessert/
Just the thing to have with Eskimo Pie! 😋 If they hadn’t changed the name. 😢
Inuit pie?
🤢🤮
I just want to say – everybody’s always going on and on about global warming, climate change, whatever the hell they’re calling it this week. But what about plate tectonics, huh? What are you doing about THAT???
Oh – and good morning.
Living away from plate boundarie.
No one lives that far, the Earth is large, you are small
It’s a lil early for SPH, isn’t it?
SMOD, it cures all tectonics
Anthropogenic tectonic shifts are the real threat.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/16/climate-change-triggers-earthquakes-tsunamis-volcanoes
Climate change is also what’s preventing me from losing weight.
Climate change ate my homework.
#metoo
*sigh*
The world is so stupid that it’s ruining my sarcasm.
*plays tiny violin*