To Wegener

Alfred Wegener (1880-1930)
Wegener was a German physicist and an explorer in the truest sense. His most noteable contribution to modern science was his theory of continental drift. His observations from around the globe led him to put together pieces of evidence that suggested that earth's continents were once fitted together in one supercontinent, and that they had drifted apart to their current position. But Wegener had no valid mechanism that would explain the movement of a continental bulk of rock, and his ideas were well ahead of his day.

Concerning Wegener's drift theory, R.T. Chamberlain said:
"Wegener's hypothesis in general is of the foot-loose type in that it takes considerable liberty with our globe."

What Chamberlain (and others) didn't appreciate was the considerable amount of valid data that Wegener had collected that supported the idea, he only lacked the mechanism that could concievably achieve the process. He was on the verge of one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of geology as a science. The views of the day caused even the best scientific minds to blatantly ignore the valid data that was laid before them.

"It is just as if we were to refit the torn pieces of a newspaper by matching their edges and then check whether the lines of print run smoothly across. If they do, there is nothing left but to conclude that the pieces were in fact joined in this way." -Alfred Wegener.

Wegener died decades before his work would be appreciated. It wasn't until the sea floor was explored in more depth that the driving mechanism Wegener sought was discovered, sea-floor spreading at mid-ocean ridges.

Photos from the Black Hills in Southeastern Arizona

One highlight from my holiday break in Arizona was my trip south to Safford to visit David and Adina Morris. David, my mentor in Geology, and Instructor of Geology and Astronomy at EAC, took me out to the Black Hills (the northern end of the Peloncillo Mountains -a Miocene volcanic mountain range) roughly northeast of Safford en route to Morenci. The above photo shows the exposed plumming system of a volcano -a basaltic plug dome.
The photo below -a caliche breccia with basaltic clasts.
An old pumice mine with David in the foreground, for scale :).
A more detailed photo of the ash deposits at the pumice mine. Notice the lighter-colored clast near the bottom. The yellow tint to it is indicative of sulfur-rich groundwater percolation. There was an entire layer of tuff which had been altered by hydrothermal processes and exhibited similar coloration.
A scoria cinder pit. This was once the site of scoria harvesting, most likely for landscape purposes.
A more detailed shot shows the size of some of the basaltic clasts in the scoriacious matrix. Notice the silicic deposits in this clast -amygduloidal scoria.
Amygduloidal basalt, and the single jack. WARNING! Use protective eyewear! (Some nice chalcedony is visible just to the left of the hammer -and all over the photo if you look closely)
Some of the chalcedony amygdules are quite large, and lovely.

Secret Tunnels

This is the entrance to the ice caves north of Rexburg; they're basaltic lava flow tubes. As lava flows, the outer layer exposed to air cools more rapidly than the molten material in the flow's interior. A basaltic rind forms, successive flows add layers to the flow tube walls, and the lava in the tube shallows as the flow decreases to a stop. This flow tube has since been percolated by water which, in Idaho's climate, turns to ice. Most of the cave floor is covered in thick ice layers. The combination of ice and basalt flow textures offered a double-helping of fascinating geology. The ice formed stalactites, stalagmites, and dendritic "feathery" snowflake-like crystals. There were also some neat flow layers and fractures in the ice. Here's a shot of ice crystals covering the ceiling:
Beautiful basaltic textures:
Me and the roomies (Kyle, Parley, me, Tom, and Trevik). At this point, the tube was segmented into an upper and lower passage; as the flow level in the tube dropped, the surface cooled and formed a shelf across the larger tube. That shelf is where we're perched for the photo.
Here's a shot of the ice-covered floor. Half the time, we were on our backs sliding along, pushing with our hands or feet. I came away from this cave with some bruised knees and elbows and a few scrapes on my fingers -totally worth it.
THE "END"

Over the Thanksgiving Break

I travelled with a friend back to Arizona for the Break. She was nice enough to stop for her rock-geek passenger to see some ash fall and tuff units. This road cut is on the stretch of Highway 20 that connects I-15 with Highway 89, just southwest of Beaver, Utah. The geological map I looked at labeled volcanics of the region as Bullion Canyon volcanics. The lighter-colored units are ash deposits and the massive darker units are rhyolitic tuff.

The ash units contain concretions.


A real treat on the way back north was the slight detour to see horseshoe bend just outside of Page, Arizona. It's a very photogenic meander in the Colorado River. We got there just as light was fading after the sun had set. No, this picture isn't mine. But the one below it is. The meander is so deep that it's difficult to get the whole thing into one shot. I may try to piece my photos into a panorama.

Igneous Rock Exam

The pictures are cruddy. Fluorescent lighting will do it almost every time.
Last week's Igneous Rock ID exam went well. I went into the exam feeling pretty comfortable, and left it feeling like I had done well.
Today, I got my ID portion of the exam back; 98%.
I once again give credit to David Morris for a job well-done. What would school be like without that firm groundwork of understanding from David?I shudder to think.

Some of the samples from the exam

Extrusive Igneous Exploration

"Please try to remember how you would've felt about this stuff when you were seven or eight."
-David Morris

Here are a few shots from the "Lava River Cave" located 13 miles North of Flagstaff.
There are plenty of lava tubes to explore here in Idaho. It's on my "to do" list.
Humans present for scale
Flow texture of the floor
Cooling fracture?
Flow lineations in the cave wall

I haven't posted that?

I can't believe I left my Yellowstone pictures unposted! Let me remedy that!
in the first photo, Bro. Dan Moore pin-points our location on a map of the Yellowstone caldera, just inside the caldera rim. Yellowstone is a playground for Geologists. I had fun watching tourists as they happened upon an expert geologist explaining Yellowstone's volcanism to students. There was an initial captivation; "Ooh! he's explaining the volcanoes!". Then they sat and attempted to decipher the lecture. Words like "isostatic" and "viscous" turned them right away. Poor saps.
Yellowstone Falls at the "Grand Canyon" of Yellowstone. See the yellow stones? That's where the park gets its name.
More staining of the ash flow deposits down the canyon
Hot Springs! You wouldn't want to swim here. The water is that pretty blue color because of the thriving thermophilic bacterium.
Mud pots! The only difference from a hot spring: proximity to the water table.
And one of the main attractions at the park, no, not bison; geysers!