Columnar Basalt on Jeju Island, Korea
• My recent junket to South Korea, purportedly on the invitation of the International Plant Biology conference, took me to Jeju Island. Dominated by the central Halla-san volcano, this temperate island has waterfalls plunging into the glittering ocean, skates drying in the wind, and tangerine groves galore. I spotted these geological formations of columnar basalt along the southern coast of Jeju island at Jusangjeolli (주상절리), and at the three-tiered Cheonjeyeon Waterfall.
• Basalt is volcanic rock formed from cooling lava. As thick lava flow cools, it fractures- more easily in the horizontal direction than vertical. This results in columnar basalt, with amazingly regular hexagonal shapes. The slower the cooling, the larger the columns. The ones on Jeju-do were formed between 250,000 and 140,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene period. Another famous example is the Giant’s Causeway of Ireland, where the geometric perfection seems artificial or photoshopped!
Thanks to Thomas Kang for exhorting me to check these out. HIRL account with Thomas coming up; sorry, no pictures of the Korean spa 😉
madame scientist's not-so-mad musings 
I guess you speed read to the last sentence, hmmm? 🙂
Wow!
its amazing
Very cool. Thank you for sharing the photos.
Glad you liked them, Bert Shaw .
Feisal Kamil , you’ll just have to grin and bare it 🙂
How about if I share a pix of Thomas Kang going Gangnam style, Aida Hazlan ? 😉
I derierre you to do that, Feisal Kamil !
Great pictures. I should post more of my older pics from conferences abroad.
Pictures, not posters, Feisal Kamil . I need proof that you were in this festival.
cultural perspective You mean from any perspective. Hehe
Oh yes, Shinae Choi Robinson . Let’s say that I lost a few inches off my surface. It was a great experience, and funny too. Thomas dropped me off there, with some explanation..but beyond that, there was no way I could communicate with the ladies there. It was err…interesting! 😀
The sacrifices I make in the name of science, Rashid Moore . Really, I ought to get a medal for this 😛
With slaps on one’s backside and not to mention where else? Loads of
funpainful embarrassment, yes, that’s right 😛Spoken like a true pasha, Dan.
You may call me Saint Rao, Rashid Moore 🙂
Those formations look very similar to the ones at the giant’s causeway in Northern Ireland. http://www.northantrim.com/giantscauseway.htm
LOL, the eyebrow raising posts of my Incorrigible friends are giving me wrinkles, Shinae Choi Robinson . Not to mention all those laugh lines. I must try the Kimchi-stuffing technique, sounds more a-peeling 🙂
wow..wat a place.
Amazing pixs Rajini Rao !! 🙂
Any beauty secrets to reveal!? 😉
“Devil’s Postpile” is also an interesting one. The size of the columns is generally related to the length of time spent cooling, i.e. slower = larger columns (larger crystals). Other factors may come into play such as the degree of water pressure.
Awesome album Rajini Rao ! 🙂
Thanks for the reference, Jim Carver . I found this:http://www.nps.gov/depo/naturescience/geology.htm
Another reason to visit Yosemite!
Yes, Yose-a-mite is dyno-mite! Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Amazing !! b nice info thank you…..you here after so long…
Thanks, prashant mahendranavar . I really need to post more regularly 🙂
Peter Lindelauf I +ed that because it was funny. I’m out of the voting business for a while.
That strikes a nice consonant chord in me, thank you Peter Lindelauf 😉
As I said, the rate of cooling is not always the determining factor for crystal growth and involves many phase characteristics of a given melt composition. It is however, often used as a rule of thumb.
While the following short article (question/answer page actually) refers to pegmatites, some interesting insights can be gained from their study:
http://www.minsocam.org/msa/special/pig/PIG_CQ/PIG_CQ_pal_sat.html
Coming back later for a “respectable armchair” viewing of the post!
nice plzce yaar
Wow Rajini Rao just saw these, very pretty! Reminds me of Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, I visited that a few years back and it was amazing – very much like these columns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant%27s_Causeway
Buddhini Samarasinghe there is also a devil’s stockpile in Sierra Nevada range with similar cooling pillars.
Btw, Rajini Rao I had referenced this when commenting on some hexagonal structure we were discussing previously…
Well, I guess that kind of spa treatment can be one way of getting your rocks off.
Gnotic Pasta asked:
So you’re saying Rajini stumbled onto the secret of how Korean women stay looking so young and beautiful for so long???
Here you go, Dan. I hope this helps:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/114049181704701025985/posts/hJG8PhEDK89
pahoehoe
?…wow…!
its a beautiful place and mountain
HI GOOD MORNING FRIEND VERY VERY NICE DAY
HI NO NEED TO SHOUT HAVE A GOOD EVENING
OI FEISAL WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING IM NOT DEAF!
WHAT’S ALL THIS SHOUTING ABOUT? IS THERE SOME SEXY TIME CHAT GOING ON?
psst, hi how r u?
SHOUTY SEXY TIME WE SHOUT SWEET NOTHINGS IN EACH OTHERS EARS BABY U WANT SOME?
yES pLEASE
Goodnight!
SWEET DREAMS CHAD NITE NITE!
sorry GOODNIGHT
It’s a wonder that I slept through all this shouting.
There’s a RAJEEV on my grill post and GOOD MORNING.
May I ask what you guys are talking about?
LOL, Buddhini Samarasinghe!
Yes, Thomas Kang, you may ask. 🙂
Good. What are you guys talking about?
Since I am not a guy, I do not match your parameters and therefore can’t answer your latest question. 🙂
Chad Haney’s ‘yes please’ should be a shining example to all the rajeevs out there. 🙂
Thomas, we are just poking fun at the folks who come on threads with their pick-up-artist lines.
Ah, Michelle, you’ve sparked some flashes of recognition, perhaps last year or much earlier this year. My vague recollection is coming back, I think.
The sequence went like this: ALL CAPS COMMENT → RAJEEV alert → Chad’s grill post (http://goo.gl/Qa40Y) quiet Rajeev → shopping cart chrome comment.
Makes perfect sense to me 😉
The way you put it, Rajini, makes perfect sense to me, too — complete, with a sense of closure to it. ^
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/4RXcCDF3iL35Ze89hk4F7O5EGoD4pANLNlYwuPtTLAZZ931sJW_MFssddx5T-qz6BaL0RzJiKA
awosome view
hello u
Basaltic Rock exhibiting Columnar joints & some vesicular too ..Nice
hello how are you
Good morning
https://plus.google.com/photos/…
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