The NASA Haughton-Mars Project.
A thousand miles or so from the Earth's North pole lies our planet's largest uninhabited island, Devon Island. Devon Island is the largest uninhabited island on Earth, with a surface area of approximately 66,800 km2. Its geology presents two major provinces: a thick (presently ~ 1.3 km) subhorizontal sequence of Paleozoic (Cambrian to Devonian) marine sedimentary rocks dominated by carbonates (dolomite and limestone) forming part of the Arctic Platform; and a Precambrian crystalline (gneissic) basement lying unconformably under the stack of marine sediments, forming part of the Canadian Shield. The Paleozoic sediments present a gentle dip of approximately 4° towards the west. The flat-topped plateau characterizing much of Devon Island's surface is an old erosional surface (peneplain) exposing sediments of increasing age towards the east. Devon Island is home to one of the highest-latitude impact structures known on Earth, Haughton Crater. At 20 kilometers in diameter the crater formed 23 million years ago, at the beginning of the Miocene, when an asteroid or a comet collided with our planet.
Little imagination is required to believe oneself on Mars when exploring Devon Island. Many features and sites there are strikingly reminiscent of the Martian landscape, from barren rocky blockfields to intricate valley networks, from precipitous winding canyons to recent gully systems on their slopes. We come here to understand whether this resemblance is merely a coincidence or whether there are common underlying causes. Did some of the processes that shaped Devon Island also operate on Mars?
The object that struck Devon Island was perhaps 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) in diameter. Coming in at cosmic speeds, the impactor delivered a pulse of energy equivalent to 100 million kilotons of TNT. In so doing, it produced a blinding flash of light followed by a monumental air blast that flattened the surroundings, obliterating almost all life several hundred kilometers around. As the impactor itself blended into the target rocks and vanished as a superheated gas, a colossal shock wave expanded into the subsurface. Rocks were crushed, melted, vaporized, and ejected. Soon, a gaping crater 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) wide and 1.7 kilometers (1 mile) deep appeared, only to shallow out moments later as its unstable walls collapsed inwards. As the dust cleared, a smoldering hole filled with a vast pool of chunky molten carbonates appeared. Haughton Crater was born.
Early research efforts at Haughton focused on studies of the crater itself with investigations into a possible Mars analog angle remaining unexplored.
A significant portion of New England was formed as a result of an accretionary orogen. Southeastern New England is marked by a series of terranes that accreted onto the Laurentian supercontinent during the Silurian and Devonian. The Terranes of Gander, Nashoba, Avalon, and Meguma are present from west to east in eastern Massachusetts and all of are Gondwanan provenance. Their modern-day juxtaposition suggests that the marginal Gondwanan micro-continents collided sequentially from west to east, expanding the Laurentian continent with each respective collision. As each subsequent plate collided, an intervening subduction zone died and a new subduction zone was created to the east. The oblique collision of the Avalon Terrane into Laurentia followed the accretions of the Gander and Nashoba Terranes and preceded the accretion of Meguma. The collision was marked by uplift, mylonitic metamorphism, and calc-alkaline Nashoba plutonism as the Iapetus Ocean subducted under the Nashoba and eventually the Avalon collided obliquely into the continental margin.
The shelf-edge includes carbonate-to-clastic facies transition and tectonic uplift and erosion of the carbonates followed by deposition of the clastics. The Saint Peter Sandstone is a well-sorted, almost pure quartz arenite deposited during a major mid-Ordovician low stand. Clastics spread across an exposed carbonate platform by transportation. This is shown by the well-rounded, frosted texture of the quartz grains.
The Kimmeridge Clay Formation is the penultimate formation of the onshore British Jurrasic Succession. William Smith was the first to document this distinct formation on his map of 1815, and to name as the Oaktree Soil. In 1817, he gave the name Oaktree Clay for the layers of clay between the “Portland Rock” and “Coral Rag and Pisolite” but in 1816 Webster was the first to describe in details the formation and changed to the name now known as kimmeridge Clay Formation after the English village of Kimmeridge on Dorset’s “Jurassic Coast” a place frequently visited by fossil hunters. (Cox and Gallois, 1981).
The site visited on this day was informally known as the Bedrock Knob (NTS grid reference: 120 342). It is in an area where patches of limestone and exposed bedrock are common. The bedrock is part of the Preca...
Tarbuck E., Lutgens F., Tasa D., 2014, An Introduction to Physical Geology, 5th Ed, Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
Stone Mountain rises in sharp contrast to the surrounding flat, rolling landscape creating a geomorphic monadnock. Geologists appear to have consensus of the volcanic origins and underground formation of t...
Simkin,T., Unger, J., Tilling, R., Vogt, P. and Spall, H. (1994) This dynamic planet : world map of volcanoes, earthquakes, impact craters, and plate tectonics. U.S. Geological Survey, Map Distribution
The rest of this article spends time speculating through the advances in technology and the reanalyzation of old evidence to determine various cataclysmic events that happened millions of years ago. There are many sections in this article that discuss the methods used to determine the closet possible dates and the sequence in which they follow. There are also sections in this article which discuss methods used for the evidence of impact, eruption and how reading the environmental changes can help paleontologists determine conclusions and narrow the perspectives of paleontologists (scientists) and popular culture as a whole.
The Palisades basalt sill is one of the most active mass movement areas in New Jersey (Pallis, 2009) and because of its activity it is important to understand the underlying mechanisms that cause the rockfalls along the outcrop. The Palisades are composed ancient Jurassic flood basalt that formed through at least three distinct intrusion events (Puffer, 2009). It is important to understand that in all of these events the molten magma was allowed to completely cool before the next event allowing for the formation of the iconic hexagonal columns of basalt (Puffer, 2009). These columns are referred to columnar joints and formed when the molten basalt cooled within the earth's crust. The cooling of the basalt caused it to shrink, creating vertical fractures along the weakest planes of the newly formed rock (Puffer, 2009). These joints are called primary joints due to these columnar joints forming as the rock itself formed (Linsey, 2014).
Krajick, Kevin. "Tracking Myth to Geological Reality." American Association for the Advancement of Science. 310.5749 (2005): 762. Print. .
“I think humans will reach Mars, and I would like to see it happen in my lifetime” was said by Buzz Aldrin, a NASA astronaut. The former American aeronaut from Montclair, New Jersey believes that since Mars does exist, it is waiting to be reached by humans. When this would happen, he says that the human race would “evolve into a two-planet species.” Present day Mars has a lot of canyons, mountains and volcanoes. Even though the surface is Mars is very old, scientists learned about different younger rift valleys, plains, hills and ridges. According to recent reports, there were lakes and rivers, along with an ocean billions of years ago. The low temperatures on the planet cause there to be polar ice caps and frozen water present. Scientists continue to notice several discoveries on the planet that lead them to think there was once life on the planet. Different clues have scientists wanting to find out about even more. Many scientists in the past few centuries have been curious if life on Mars is possible or if it has ever been before.
"NPS: Nature & Science» Geology Resources Division." Nature.nps.gov » Explore Nature. Web. 05 Dec. 2011. .
The epicenter of the earthquake in Alaska was about 10km east of the College Fiord, approximately 90km west of Valdez and 120km east of Anchorage, Alaska largest city. The earthquake was felt about 1,300,000 square kilometers away from the epicenter. (Christensen, Doug PhD.) About 30 kilometers deep, the first slip occurred under northern Prince William Sound, and an 800 kilometer rupture in the rocks extended horizontally, roughly parallel to the Aleutian trench. (Bolt) The cause of this massive earthquake was the vertical displacement of northwest motion of the Pacific plate. Also, it was estimated that about 200,000 square kilometers of the crust were deformed, making this the greatest area of vertical displacement ever measured. (Bolt)
Digging up the dirt on Mauna Loa. (Hawaiian volcano studied) Science News v144, n25-26 December 18th, 1993 414 (1 page)