Entries by Lance Weaver

What Makes the Rock Red (in Utah/Arches & Zion National Park)

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Utah’s Colorado Plateau is famous for its striking vistas and dazzling colors. Hues of red, pink, maroon, yellow, brown, and white create an array of stunning rock colors that attract visitors from all over the globe. From the red rocks of the Navajo Sandstone to the Vermilion Cliffs of the Moenave and Kayenta Formations to the pink, crimson, and chocolate cliffs of the upper Grand Staircase, many who visit the Colorado Plateau wonder what gives the rocks their brilliant colors.

Is the Orbit of Jupiter related to Solar Cycles and How Gravity Waves & Electrical Properties Affect the Earth and Shape the Arms of the Milky Way Galaxy

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Introduction Although my degree is in geology & geophysics, and not nuclear or astrophysics, I’v always had a keen interest in physics and would love to go back to school one day and get a graduate degree somewhere in that field. My advanced physics, geochronology and geophysics classes in college really interested and excited me. At just the age […]

The Cockscomb Monocline & Cottonwood Wash of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument

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Tourists and geologists alike come from all over the world to see and study the magnificent exposures of geologic units displayed in Utah’s Colorado Plateau region. Of particular interest is the Grand Staircase, which is an immense sequence of sedimentary rock layers that stretches south from Bryce Canyon National Park and Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument […]

The Geology of Zion National Park

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Although the geology of the Zion National Park includes nine known exposed formations, Zion is predominately the result of one spectacular unit, the Navajo Sandstone. Zion’s formations represent about 150 million years of mostly Mesozoic-aged sedimentation in a large ancient Jurassic basin. The Navajo is part of a super-sequence of rock units called the Grand Staircase, the time exposed […]

The Vishnu Schist

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(exposed in Arizona’s Grand Canyon) The Vishnu schist is part of the Vishnu complex in the exposed basement rocks of the Grand Canyon region. This metamorphic layer was formed by the intrusion of plutonic masses from under the crust and the deposit of sediment from an eroded mountain chain. The oldest rocks in the Vishnu […]