Upheaval Dome: Utah’s ‘stomach button’ that has divided scientists since its discovery – The Gentleman Report | World | Business | Science | Technology | Health
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Upheaval Dome: Utah’s ‘stomach button’ that has divided scientists since its discovery

Upheaval Dome: Utah’s ‘stomach button’ that has divided scientists since its discovery
January 31, 2025



Upheaval Dome is a rock formation in Utah with jagged peaks carved into concentric rings. Astronauts on board the Global Area Station photographed the construction in 2007, sparking comparisons between the enormous dome and a stomach button.Upheaval Dome stretches 3 miles (5 kilometers) throughout and 1,000 ft (300 meters) prime. Its starting place stays reasonably debatable, however the presence of stunned quartz crystals on the web site suggests the dome mushroomed after a meteorite smashed into Earth 60 million years in the past.Comparable: ‘Alien plant’ fossil came upon close to Utah ghost the city does not belong to any recognized plant households, dwelling or extinctGeologists suppose the meteorite have an effect on first of all left a bowl-shaped hole within the floor, and that the sides of this hole have been volatile and in the end collapsed. Underlying rocks might then have risen to fill the void, developing the ridged construction we see these days.However now not everybody is of the same opinion with this interpretation. Some scientists imagine that Upheaval Dome was once shaped via a mountain of salt emerging underneath southeastern Utah’s sandstone layers.A thick layer of salt originating from historical landlocked seas sits underneath Canyonlands Nationwide Park. Salt is somewhat mild and will transfer round in rocks, similar to ice can migrate on the backside of a glacier, in line with the Nationwide Park Provider (NPS).Salt could also be much less dense than sandstone, so it would have created an enormous “bubble” that shoved the rocks apart because it surged upwards, in line with the NPS.Get the arena’s most enticing discoveries delivered directly in your inbox.View from the edge of Upheaval Dome in Utah. We see a steep sandstone outcrop surrounding a central, whitish outcrop.An image taken from the brink of Upheaval Dome presentations how erosion stripped the central a part of the construction. (Symbol credit score: Mark C Stevens/Getty Pictures)Upheaval Dome is not going to be the salt bubble itself lined in sandstone, as a result of erosion more than likely stripped a number of layers off the construction over the eons. As an alternative, the dome’s heart is thought of as to be a rocky base that shaped underneath the salt bubble because of rocks falling into cracks across the edges of the bubble. Those rocks will have rolled down alongside the edges of the bubble and piled up underneath the salt, developing the craggy characteristic we see these days.If true, the salt bubble principle would make Upheaval Dome probably the most deeply eroded salt construction on this planet.However the discovery of the stunned quartz crystals is the ultimate printed investigation into the origins of Upheaval Dome. It is unclear whether or not analysis is ongoing to settle the case as soon as and for all.Uncover extra implausible puts, the place we spotlight the incredible historical past and science in the back of probably the most maximum dramatic landscapes on Earth.

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