Image cropped for size from the original posted at Live Science, where you can read about the controversies about the formation of the gap. See also Geology Science, which offers this image:
Personally I don't believe this formed as a result of a natural fault or joint. The rock itself is sandstone, so I would bet that humans created the gap using rope with perhaps added abrasives, perhaps just as a whimsy.
Geologist here. I hate to burst your bubble, but this is what a little wind and water can do to rock formations with cracks. What makes this one stand out is the surrounding rock has already eroded away.
ReplyDelete- Joshua Tree National Park (a different type of erosion sequence)
https://www.nps.gov/jotr/learn/nature/geologicformations.htm
- Manpupuner Formations (varying resistances)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptf3FjvHyxU
- Tokangawhā / Split Apple Rock (could have been a similar situation if the base rock didn't fail)
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/split-apple-rock-tokangawha
- Giant's Causeway, Northern Ireland (jointing due to slow cooling. scroll down)
https://www.instagram.com/p/DaTuqTXGgy3/
- Devils Postpile National Monument (another jointing due to slow cooling)
https://www.nps.gov/depo/index.htm
- Uluru, Australia (an Inselberg showing how a formation can appear in a flat plain)
https://www.ourbreathingplanet.com/uluru/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=1670579515&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI26regsbHlQMVzwa8AR3iUzKWEAAYAiAAEgL-iPD_BwE
- Unusual geology of your neck of the world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO1FplJGsgY
Wow. Thank you, anonymous person, for all those links. It will take me a while to review them, especially since some are videos that are harder to skim. I'll try to reply within the next week.
DeleteWell... there goes my space laser theory. Now I have to find another place to apply it.
DeleteYeah, I was going with the off world aliens and their space saver laser as well.
DeleteBut on a different tack, I reckon if Anonymous the geologist can use the woke recently changed name of Ayer's Rock (in Australia, a country that MY people made into a modern nation) he or she should also use the native people's names for the place he/she calls Joshua Tree, Giant's Causeway, and Devil's Postpile National Monument.
Or better still, don't ... just keep on using the names we called the places before the United Nations (an unelected group of people tasked with ... what ?) decided that it is best if we rename everything in the words of the people who lived in caves or used sticks to make fire.
I get a bit upset at the indifference shown to White people, and the disrespecting of our efforts in improving the world in general.
Name something invented, anything you can think of, and now tell me what race invented it.
Sorry if that comes across as racist, but like I said, I am so tired of all the anti-white bull going on in the world.
Ok, the boomerang, and by the Australian aborigine people, but thats it for them.
Ayer's Rock, mate, named after the bloke who discovered it.
@Anonymous: Does this mechanism work like cleaving a crystal along its crystal planes?
ReplyDeleteTo answer Nepkarel's comment first, yes cleaving a crystal plane can aid in weathering. But first, you need to figure out how two blocks of stone are out in the middle of nowhere. Not knowing the geology of this area, I can only make guesses.
ReplyDelete1. You can see horizontal fractures, so I would assume there would be vertical fractures also.
2. It's a desert now (had to be a depositional basin before when the sandstone layer was created, extend well beyond what you see now),so it can get very cold at night which can create a freeze/thaw in a vertical joint.
3. If the wind blows, you can get a sandblasting effect which would widen the joint.
4. This is sandstone, so it's a cemented mass of granular material. Water is going to try to dissolve that bond. But I believe the initial joint however small dictated its appearance.
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Ouch, says this white Geologist who may have ancestors from your country. Hey I'm just naming the place what it was called before the white man decided to rename it. Remember white people didn't arrive there until 1606 and the native Anangu peoples have been calling it that for at least 30,000 years when they discovered it.
I spent 6 weeks down there (a big circle: Melbourne to the east coast all the way north and coastal islands, then over to Darwin and down south to Adelaide and back to Melbourne by road) on vacation (and climbed up it) and never came across this attitude. Every white person from the very young to the elderly in 1987 that I came across called it Uluru. That's how I knew the name and not by some body of people calling it that.
Ok, I'll call the Giant's Causeway, Clochán an Aifir or Clochán na bhFomhórach. Another country in my family tree.
Joshua Tree doesn't seem to have a native name for the 800,000 acre park. The Serrano called it Maará, but that just describes the water feature. Maybe Yuhaviatam / Maarenga'yam for the hunting grounds. The Chemehuevi called it Nüwü (the people) maybe referring to the trees. But, the park consists of many rock formations.
The Devils Postpile could be called Nüümü Poyo, but that's what the white people call the John Muir Trail which has nothing to do with the rock formation.
Man, even the area I was born and raised in (two different states [MI,MN] at that time in my life) I didn't use the name Lake Superior, but called it Gichi-gami or Kitchi-gami. I'm real old, so this is not some new cultural/political thing that I picked up.
You mean "tha Giant's Causey"?
Delete