CWU's Nick Zentner presents 'Floods of Lava and Water' - the 5th talk in his ongoing Downtown Geology Lecture Series. Recorded at Raw Space on November 10, 2010 in Ellensburg, Washington, USA. www.nickzentner.com
The ONLY bad thing about these videos is that from time to time I’m compelled to raise my hand and ask a question. Unfortunately, I’m on the wrong end of the continent in the future.
Ahhhh ha ha ha! I do the very same can't believe I am not alone. I LOVED school, University. I lived 30 miles from Ellensburg. Did a lot of shopping in Ellensburg. If I had only known about Nick Z. I would never have moved to Oregon. He allows people to sit in during his lectures for free. Go on his field trips for free. Too cool of a guy that makes this incredible teacher/professor. Great teacher...
Great series. Too bad the quality of the videos is so poor. Cannot see what's written on the boards (glare), cameraman frequently focused on him instead of what he is writing, cannot hear people's questions/comments (he should repeat them), camera resolution so poor. In spite of this, I've become addicted to watching these. Because there is considerable repetition between them, I'm slowly getting the whole (?) picture.
@@ginfonte3386 But if a propaganda-media presentation (BBC, Nat. Geo, Discovery Channel, etc.) there'd only be about 3 minutes of real material interspersed with FUD and their propagandizing of their "Climate Change" scam falling between several minutes of pills and potions ads.
Nick, I was born on Whidbey Island but raised in backwater Alabama. I am only just now finding your lectures, despite the fact that they were filmed back in 2013(ish). However, as you are a geologist and think in terms of millions of years... I think I found your vids in a pretty timely fashion! Seriously, great job!! If I weren't already a 50+-year-old business executive, I'd be enrolling in a geology degree program somewhere as a Freshman because of you!!!!
Good thing we can now learn so much from utube. I'm 62 next week. I really find this fascinating. I've been binge watching all of his videos. Portland Oregon
He makes it easier to understand such information that goes beyond a lower level of ones own understanding of such phenomenal facts. So much time inbetween and with nature just impossible to predict a precise timeline for such an event to occur in future. Was amazing with Mt St Helens though, to know something inevitable would be happening.
Nick, I recently discovered your lectures. They bring me back to my younger days growing up at Grand Coulee in a land of dramatic geology. My dad was a road engineer and he instilled a love of rocks and soils that exists to this day. We had previously lived in Missoula, where you can still see the beach lines far up on the hills, and to learn all that water had carved the coulees and Dry Falls was mind boggling. I'm glad you talked about Glacial Lake Columbia, it answered questions I had about the varve clay deposits along the Sanpoil arm of Lake Roosevelt. Thank you for doing this, it really brings me back.
Brilliant lectures - explained in a way that is understandable without being patronising. I found one by chance and am now hooked. I live on Fuerteventura with a caldera half a mile from my home - wish we had the same sort of interest for explaining the geology here!
I spent countless hours exploring Moses Coulee from rock island to dry falls. Amazing areas around Douglas creek, pinto ridge, Billy Clapp etcetera. The stemilt basin is also very interesting.
Nick, you are the first teacher who has grabbed my attention using a youtube channel to get further education. Your presentations are absolutely superb and offer huge motivation to learn about the geology of the North West of the US. I am from Australia, yet totally intrigued about this amazing geologically interesting region. I wish I grew up and lived there. From your work I would imagine that the basaltic lava flows of the Siberian Traps, the Indian Deccan Traps and the lava flows where Victoria Falls is situated and Iguazu Falls in South America would also be of 45% silica? Is that correct? Or is there a different explanation for those formations? I hope to see many many more of your fantastic lectures in the future. Thank you so much. Merry Christmas.
Wow. Thanks for the very nice comments. New lectures this winter....one on Flood Basalts of the Pacific Northwest. Yes, India and Siberia lavas are also 45%.
Hi Nick, I know it's not your usual patch but I wondered if you have ever done a lecture on Ol Doinyo Lengai in Tanzania? only recently learned of its existence and would love to get your take on the only known active Natrocarbonatite volcano in the world, is it plausible that this volcano is the source of Carbon based lifeforms as humans are supposed to have begun in the East African Rift Valley?
Actually, it goes the other way: the crustal rocks being melted and erupted there were partly deposited by marine plankton long ago. Life long predated their deposition.
I agree with the comment on how engaging you are, and with a good sense of humor. As a professor, it hurts to see how often teachers fail to get students involved or curious about topics which the teachers are not only experts in, and therefore familiar with the controversial topics, but about which they are supposedly passionate! You don't have that failing.
So interesting! Probably because my bit of Australia (northern Victoria/southern New South Wales is flat - hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of billiard table flat!
Ive only lived in Wenatchee two years but your lectures are very interesting. I can enjoy exploring here with a fine background of knowledge from nicks talks
psst...by the way, your enthusiasm for the subjects you teach is positively infectious and that's a big part of why, I think, so many people love the lectures! It is so much easier to learn things from someone who really gets excited about what he's teaching & has evident passion for the details, etc.!! Love the lectures. I can't begin to enumerate all the various things that I've learned since I started watching this series! Thanks again!! Hope you keep making these! (also, it's 9/2018 right now & this one is from 2010, though I have seen some of the more recent lectures from earlier this year! Love 'em all!!
Great video Nick. Keep instructing! I would love to ask if there could have been an old piece of oceanic crust that stalled after the terranes fused to NA plate, where the J de F began then to subduct beneath the terranes, leaving the earlier, far more eastern piece stalled, only to experience massive melt when Yellowstone HS passed under, creating a sea of ocean basalt in. Eastern Washington
Happy to hear you mention the Bonneville flood. I am from that area of Northern Utah and Southern Idaho, see the bench areas on the mountains which were the ancient shoreline. I also annoy the hell out of my wife whenever we drive to Pocatello and I point out the exact spot where the old lake Bonneville broke out at Red Rock pass into the Snake River plane and draining Salt Lake and Cache Valleys. Next time in Pocky we'll have to try Buddy's.
nick, I live on the edge of Yellowstone in gardiner mt. grew up here, and although in my teens I was not interested in rocks so much, I am now. one part to your flood speech around 40 mins in that I think is massively overlooked is the MASS of water and its weight. In another of your lectures you spoke of how the basalt fields in Washington weighed down and morphed the crust of earth. WELLLLL if there was really 2 miles thick of ice directly over parts pf Yellowstone, bear tooths ect... this would move your blow torch closer to the crust. The huge masses of ice and water would also pool in valley floors making our mountains taller, and floors deeper ( in elevation), making it hard to know or calculate how much water and ice we are dealing with. I theorize the numbers are MUCH larger than most scientist currently state. And also, that the most logical melting or cause of these floods is volcanic activity from the hot spots in Yellowstone. I live in MONTANA, but my well water is 60-70 deg. look up Devils slide, la duke springs. ect. its clear some crazy forces were in play all over the area, but also there is hundreds of feet of sedimentary rocks, and ancient river bed (sand bars to be more exact) where I live. There was both many floods I suspect, and a few cataclysmic ones also. The only thing that makes the awesome power of Yellowstone more impressive, is the thought of it having an event UNDER an ice shelf. Just like any bomb, the more resistance there is to the expanding gasses increases the power of the explosion.
A thought, the cracks must be wide enough to allow little or no contamination to the silica keeping it at the 45% level and then not having time to melt the rocks at the narrow top in of the crack as it leaves the crack to flow to the Pacific Ocean.
Absolutely! If I lived closer I'd be sitting in your classes. As it is I hope you keep posting! AND should you ever need ideas for a series called "how did that happen". I've got a ton of questions needing answers!
I'd love to drop Nick into my local area, you can see a easy half dozen distinct different extinct volcanos, and also one that everyone previously assumed was a volcano, but after mining started in the 60's it was found to have been some kind of crater filled up with fresh lava in the past, then erosion and millions of years have left it looking like a pancake shaped volcano several hundred feet higher than the surrounding geology. Lots of volcanic plugs out into the sea, and weird twisted landscapes. And a fault line running right through the middle of it all so you can get a good look at layers back through time, or see areas where it's been twisted 90° from what I should be! Lots of geologists come from my area! :) fracking was invented a few miles up the road, old coal miners flinging explosive down flooded mineshafts to release coal gas 👀
Not that peaceful. You are sitting on a area exactly like the Channeled Scablands. The Cliffs of Dover was once a huge dam connected to France. It broke and caused a MegaFlood that created the same rock formations as here. Problem is that it's all underwater so you can't see it. www.qpg.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/englishchannelfloods/physicstoday.pdf
Could it be the cube square law? With such a large volume of magma (volume goes with the cube), maybe the contamination (the area of contact goes with the square), so there just a vastly diluted source of oceanic lave that gives you the basalt we see. I have no idea, just a thought (I’m sure someone has figured out why that’s not the case)
just watched a presentation on the birth of Britain as an island online from the Imperial College of London. The lecture referenced the work done here in Washington state regarding the channeled scab lands. So cool that the work is known internationally! Go Wildcats!!
I have heard you say in past videos that the Columbia is running through old peaks and the basalt cliffs are the old valleys. If that was the case why are the cliffs not “con caved”? If the lava flows filled the valleys they would get wider the higher they went. Just curious Thanks
Another way to say what's I said is, RU-vid FOREVER and nothing else. There, [ I mean here } "IS" what and where I and all of you out there can learn for ourselves for ones.
Hi Nick! Minnesotan here...hoping someone over here will delve into our semi-boring geological history (with exception of the mid-continent rift for you Wisconsinites!). Loving this series.
From the 17Ma position of the Yellowstone Hot Spot in northern Nevada you have the caldera track to the northeast and the reflection you mentioned running to the northwest. We know that Nevada was spreading laterally east/west, the centerline of which would be heading south from about the same location. I'm imagining a triple point, like a failed continental rift reacting with (or perhaps causing) a hot spot. That wide U-shaped valley of the Snake River is similar to the U-shaped feature of the Mid Continental Rift that holds Lake Superior.
Nick this is the second time I have seen the slide of the Bonneville flood deposits covered by Missoula flood deposits. Why is the material grading in the Bonneville flood deposit fine on the bottom and coarse at the top just under the Missoula deposit? This would seem to indicate more energy at the end of the flood than at the beginning.
Mystery Theory. The USA tectonic plate was underwater. Until induction and magma pressure build up starts to raise the tectonic plate up. This raises the land, and would cut off the north pacific to south atlantic current (center of usa and is why it mostly sand). this would cause a global freezing and the frozen water that remained are the glaciers that slowly moved south to the golf. so the volcanic eruptions would have basalt because they were under water, explains the viscosity as well.
I have an idea, with rising sea level, couldn't we pipe in sea water to death valley as a water shed & simultaneously dome over that area with a clear plastic to catch the fresh water evaporating from the sea water, then later shut the valve and collect the salt, repeat as needed, theoretically?!?!
+Mary Greeley Thanks for watching, Mary. The Yellowstone Hot Spot remains under that area. There have been super eruptions every 1 million years on average, although the last three have been every 700,000 years.
The Reason that the POLYGONAL BASALT COLUMNS are produced has to do with the way that LAVA cools when molten. Cambridge University Professor Dan McKenzie did the relative Experimental Research. You can watch him discuss the subject of Lava Heat Transfer (from Hot to Cold) in the BBC Documentary Series EARTH STORY.
I just love this dude! I'd take a class in anything he taught! My question; the 10000 feet of basalt? Most is below sea level? Was it laid below sea level or did the whole gobbly goop sink? I'll keep listening...grins!
What if the material sliding down the subduction zone changed in density amd became harder for a period of time temporarily raising the land obo e it and causing fissures just for the period of time it took to pass through the subduction zone. Then the land receded and the fissures became inactive.
What concerns me is that there are earthquakes on this side of the Mississippi. And a bunch of really smart people are not sure why. I’m in N.C., and we’ve had small rumblings here. We’re (geologically speaking?) within spitting distance of South Carolina and Missouri, both of which have had real, honest to goodness, seismic events. If the West Coast is so blatantly under the influence of massive forces, yet for long periods escapes destruction, what monster is hiding under this end of the North American plate, building up to drop us below sea level? I’ve had some experience with doctors saying “We’re not really sure what’s going on.” When other highly trained specialists say that about my entire region, I get a bit antsy. And when I consider the effects of insane amounts of energy being released on the West Coast, and being transmitted across the plate into whatever is going on “over here”, it gives me pause. Maybe that’s silly, but the folks at Central Washington University get me thinking, for better or worse.
Another wonderful lecture! Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. Ps, I'm leaning towards the "rotating plate theory" combined with the position of the "hot spot" 17 m. Years ago.
The main misunderstanding about the ancient history of our planet is that we deny that there is a cycle of natural disasters. That is written in ancient books as the Mahabharata from India and the Popol Vuh from the Maya. These disasters are causing a huge tidal wave, floods, volcano eruptions, earthquakes and a bombardment of fiery meteors mixed with a dust of clay and sand. There have been at the least hundreds of floods. As a result, the many horizontal layers of the earth have been created with in each layer fossils of both land and sea animals. This cycle of seven natural disasters creates a cycle of five civilizations. One of these five develops longer than the others and reaches in the end a higher level of knowledge and skills than we have today. To learn much more about the recurring flood cycle and its chronology, the re-creation of civilizations and ancient high technology, read the e-book: "Planet 9 = Nibiru". It can be read on any computer, tablet or smartphone. Search: invisible nibiru 9
Would the rotation of the northwest states be caused by a weaker section of the north american plate near the Canadian border or a steeper angle of incidence of the Juan de Fuca plate at its more northern end?
Possible old rifting causing the basalts, before the offshore terrain slammed into the west coast which caused the rifting to stop as it squeezed the rifting back together..just a theory but it would explain a lot. The Pacific plate moving nnw could have been causing rifting which caused the fissures but once the Juan Defuca slammed the Islands into the west coast it halted the rifting. Just a theory..could be 100 percent wrong. I'm an amateur at best.
I don't know much about geology (in electrical engineering) but could those large cracks be started from the Yellowstone hostspot explosion/detonation. If the crust is thinner due to dumping terranes and it being an ancient seam, combined with the explosive force of Yellowstone, it might thin the rock layer, break most of the continent down to the magma layer (stuff continents float on) and allow it to rise. At that point, you have a weeping seam on an old crack, it might zipper slowly up and release more flows as the active unzip point moves. It may stop from running out of energy, or a stronger seam joining the old NA and terranes, like when you have an stubborn zipper getting caught on thread and bad teeth. this may explain the runny magma/lava as there is less continental there to thicken it as it was cracked by Yellowstone, and also allow it to start and stop. As for actual proof, I live in the southern part of the Great Lakes, no geology for me to compare it to, so I could be making stuff up, but these concepts of zippers and explosions have been in separate videos and random fact books I have read.
Maybe the cracks were created by the pull of the rotation of Northern California, Oregon and half of Washington, the location being the thinner section of the plate. Like pulling on a flat chunk of play-doe. Could the cracks be the actual point of separation between the two plates as the rotation rips off its chunk of the American Plate and eventually would have the ocean fill in the gap between the separated sections?
I worked for a concrete company whose main aggregate pit is in Dupont, WA. I was told that the aggregate had come from Montana during the ice age floods. Could you please comment on this? Thank You!
I love listening to Nick Zentner’s lectures, but I never realized how many ways the Northwestern United States is waiting to be destroyed. “Hey, we built our house a long way from any volcano, so we’re safe! Oops! What’s this coming down the valley? We’re not near Yellowstone, so we don’t have to worry about super volcanoes, right? Oops! My bad! We’re not near California, so we don’t have to worry about a huge earthquake. Oops, there goes the Full Rip! Well, at least here we don’t get tsunamis in Washington. Uh oh!”
Nick, you inspire me to learn. Your an amazing teacher. I can't believe all this cool stuff happened in our state. Now when I go hiking I look at the land completely different. Thank you. Any new videos coming out soon?
46:00 I see stems of mushrooms. Volcanic eruption, followed by immediate cooling, and lost of upward pressure due to the NEXT IN SEQUENCE eruption. Naturally the full length of flow is severed like the extrusion of pasta through a shaping device.
but if the hotspot has moved the past million years then the cracks are not gonna be active anymore right? So it could be maybe be the factor of those two? The clockwise rotation, who brought the fissure further away, while the hotspot also moved away from there. ?? im 29 minutes in, i better continue XD
Hot spot: Wait a minute you said a couple lectures ago, that there is evidence of the hot spot moving all the way to the Oregon coast, NOT starting in Idaho???
I would hypothesize that the bent or curved columns occur when there is a sufficient and uneven transverse load on the flow during a point in the cooling phase where the columns have crystalized out of the flow, but the material is still hot enough to retain plasticity. I would expect that open cracks between the columns would be pretty much non-existent in cases like this, whereas perfectly vertical columns with highly refined faceting probably have the greatest likelihood of not just open cracks, but large gaps between the columns. No lateral forces in this latter case. The bent columns would therefore most likely occur in areas just below or at the point where a flow drops down from a higher point of altitude. If the material is hotter with depth and cooler towards the surface, one might surmise that the flow pressure and thus load is greatest with depth, therefore the bent columns would tend to sit in towards the hillside with the bases thrust further outwards. Just a hypothesis.
Good point. There have been proposals to quantify the isostatic rebound of the Okanagon Lobe, but no action on that yet. The significance of the rebound remains uncertain.
What happens when a spreading zone, like the East Pacific Rise, is subducted under a continental plate? Is the ocean spreading at the oceanic ridges being pulled apart by the sinking plate at the subduction zone or pushed apart by rising magma? If cause by rising magma, would that liner hotspot not continue to exist if Subducted?
I saw a diffrent documentary where they believed that ,if earth gets hit by a large solar flare or large mass of energie it super charges the atmospehere forcing it to compress from its current height to less then 1/10 of it right now. After that all of the excess energie gets discharged to the ground as a massive lightning bolt 10000 times bigger then the ones we see today. All that energie organises all the minerals in to large resurce deposites of diffrent minerals . At the same it caouses the whole earth to vibrate at a low tune ,turning whole ground less dense allowing free movement for lava. This would explain how magma could travel to the surface unpolluted since it would take it 100 times less time to reach the surface. We even have mountains in middle east that show signs of high voltage movement through the ground forming mountain sized tree branch like images on the ground. Locals called it the dragons breath if i remember correclty. One side bombarded whit lightning other side flooded whit lava. Of course theremight be other effects as well since we still have the 1 day freezing of siberia(animals frozen in ice found where they were seen frozen in a running state instantly) and the melting of stone across the world.
What happens when the North American Plate crosses ontop of the East Pacific rise where fresh crust is created? Could this have caused the rising basalt lava?
