Roots of Mother Appalachia

Comments

• uniqueid198x@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Small? The Appalachians today are the resting skeleton of a mountain range so tall and enduring that the mud and sand that washed off them piled miles high and formed the Catskill mountains. The Appalachians were so mighty that their garbage formed mountains

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  • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Also they spread so far that they were broken when Pangaea, the first landmass, split apart. The other half is the Scottish Highlands. They are older than the Atlantic Ocean between them.

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    • uniqueid198x@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      One nit, pangea wasn’t the first supercontinent, we know of at least two, maybe three before it. The stone of the Adirondak mountains was formed as part of the Grenville mountains, which were built by a suprecontinent 1.5 billion years ago (the adirondaks got tall be’ause of a much more recent, unrelated thing, but their stone is very old). The Grenville runs from Hudson Bay to Texas

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    • JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      And theoretically the Atlas in Northern Africa

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  • FooBarrington@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Big deal, Americans do the same every day!

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    • Mutelogic@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Dammit! I am sleep deprived and grumpy, but you got a good chuckle out of me… Thanks.

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    • uniqueid198x@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Ok yeah this was good

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  • Classy@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Isn’t Appalachia part of the Andes too, or are they unrelated?

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    • uniqueid198x@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Completely unrelated. North and south america wern’t attached when the appalachians were tall. The Andes are formed by an ocean plate (the Nazca plate) dragging as it is sucked under south america. They are tall, and still growing taller.

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    • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Unlikely, the Andes are newer.

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    • protist@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      No, the Andes are part of the American Cordillera, which also includes the Sierra Nevada and Sierra Madre and has to do with the Pacific Plate/Ring of Fire

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• page@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  As a geologist who works in the Appalachians… They’re cool af.

  Nothing is more surreal than being a geologist. Just today I was standing on a dirt road in the middle of farmers field. Looking at the ground is an innocuous little outcrop of boring looking rocks. But those rocks erupted at the bottom of a back arc basin off the coast of Laurentia, was buried by ocean sediment for ages, had an entire ISLAND of rock thrust onto it, and then buried 10s of kilometers deep. The history one rock can tell is amazing.

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  • NightAuthor@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You must be fun at parties

    No, like for real. People getting excited about what they do is the best.

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  • jadero@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    As a non-geologist living next to Lake Diefenbaker (the reservoir formed by damming the South Saskatchewan River), I also like geological history.

    I have a standard reply for when I’m asked why we chose to move to this “treeless wasteland”. “I look out at the flat horizon and see how the glaciers planed the earth the way a woodworker flattens a board. I look around me at the river breaks and see how the meltwater from retreating glaciers carved the earth away into shapes that defy imagination.” I don’t know accurate any of that is, but it fits my mental model of what I was taught in high school.

    (What we call the river breaks are twisted and braided networks of coulees, some with sides so steep as to require mountaineering equipment. Most still run with meltwater in the spring.)

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  • uniqueid198x@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I have started daydreaming of a career change to geology. There are just so many unanswered questions and its not like space or physics were these questions are tinyor super far away. You can just walk upto a geologic puzzle and hit it with a hammer.

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    • sj_zero ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      "this rock tastes like.... History."
    • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Unfortunately geology jobs that aren’t working for the oil and gas industries are few and far between.

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• Voyajer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  At their highest it was estimated that the Appalachians were comparable to the Himalayas, with the potential for Everest height mountains along the chain.

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  • wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    They are also only half of the original mountain range, which was split when pangaea split apart.

    The other half is now resting across europe, I think along the northern range.

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    • Serisar@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The scottish highlands are the continuation of the appalachians. Those long striations you can easily see on heightmaps is pretty much the most easily noticeable features of both ranges.

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  • uniqueid198x@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    This is because thats basically the upper limit for how tall a mountain can be on this planet.

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    • ech@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      What’s the limiting factor? I assume it’s something with gravity?

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• shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Almost heaven, West Virginia

  Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River

  Life is old there, older than the trees

  Younger than the mountains, growin’ like a breeze

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  • PoisonedPrisonPanda@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Never thought about the song that way…

    Wow.

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    • shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      LOVE this song, got it in a couple of lists. Never understood that lyric. Mr. Denver was ahead of us all.

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  • FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I always wanted to hear the original version where he sings about how they strip mined all of that away for the coal and it now looks like something out of Mad Max.

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• Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  And that is the scientific reason the Appalachians are haunted as hell.

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  • Chetzemoka@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    We worship the Old Gods in them there hills.

    www.oldgodsofappalachia.com

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    • Literati@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Was thinking of this pod while reading the post. So good

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    • NielsBohron@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      As someone who reads much more than listens to podcasts, I’ve wanted to get into this series for years now, but it feels like I never have enough time, especially as I’m not sure my wife would be onboard with the idea of an audio serial.

      Then again, it is spooky season, so now’s the time to pitch it, I guess. Any suggestions for diving in for a podcast novice who has a negligible commute and small kids at home? My kids are not sheltered but any stretch, but are probably too young for eldritch horror.

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• Maddie@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I’m not really a science person, but that was really cool to read!

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  • NightAuthor@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I’m not really a non-science-person person, but I’m glad u appreciated it.

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• fsxylo@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  And by “enjoy them while you can” it really means “your life will elapse millions of times over before they’re gone”

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• Yora@diyrpg.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I had to look if this was posted in Science Memes or RPG Memes.

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• immuredanchorite@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  One thing that will never seem to leave my head is that I had read that the current mountain tops of the Appalachians are actually the original valleys of the mountain range. The mountains were so old and large that the valleys of todays Appalachian’s were the footprint of what was once maybe the largest mountain range earth has seen

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  • uniqueid198x@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    What we see now are the ancient roots. Before the continental colision, there was a sea and subduction zone. This gave us sandstones, diorite, and granite… All of which were crushed at incredible pressure and temperature by the continental collision. At the deep roots of the mountains, this transformed the rock into gneiss, marble, and other extremely hard rock. Additionally, the forces were so great that the very bottom melted and became fresh granite.

    All of these stones are very hard and resistant to erosion, and are what we see todayas the Appalachians

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  • ElHexo@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I think they were as tall as the Alps are now - because the crust essentially “floats” on the mantle as mountains are eroded (and glaciers slide off), the land gradually rises

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• 6daemonbag@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I love the amount of praise in these comments. My dad is a geologist and used to always gush about the Appalachians when I was growing up

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• FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Also, they got moonshine.

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  • fossilesque@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Das rite.

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• benjhm@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I’m by the river Meuse in Wallonie, which still cuts through the Ardennes, another end of same old mountain range as the Appalachians, continuously eroding while mountains uplifted (just as Indus and Brahmaputra cut through Himalayas now), before the Atlantic ocean existed. Makes you think about time, pity schools don’t teach this stuff.

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• sj_zero ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Appreciate the Appalachians adequately, alright?
• TheScaryDoor@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  The Rockies and most of the mountain ranges on the west coast were formed from the erosion of the Appalachian mountains!

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  • AOCapitulator@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    What?

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    • TheScaryDoor@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      www.uh.edu/nsm/…/0723-geologic-history.php

      Basically sediment from the Appalachian region was deposited by ancient rivers and wind currents, with this sediment later being uplifted and then eroded to form the Rockies.

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