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Basalt columns seen on Porto Santo Island, Portugal. Columnar jointing of volcanic rocks exists in many places on Earth. Perhaps the most famous basalt lava flow in the world is the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, in which the vertical joints form polygonal columns and give the impression of having been artificially constructed.
Columnar jointing in Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland Columnar jointing in the Alcantara Gorge, Sicily. Columnar jointing is a geological structure where sets of intersecting closely spaced fractures, referred to as joints, result in the formation of a regular array of polygonal prisms (basalt prisms), or columns.
Columnar jointing in basalt, Marte Vallis. Image courtesy High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, University of Arizona. [1] Marte Vallis is a valley in the Amazonis quadrangle of Mars, located at 15 North and 176.5 West. It is 185 km long and was named for the Spanish word for "Mars". [2]
Tyrrhena Terra is a large area on Mars, centered south of the Martian equator and immediately northeast of the Hellas basin.Its coordinates are , and it covers 2300 km at its broadest extent
Cooling joints are columnar joints that result from the cooling of either lava from the exposed surface of a lava lake or flood basalt flow or the sides of a tabular igneous, typically basaltic, intrusion. They exhibit a pattern of joints that join together at triple junctions either at or about 120° angles.
Flood basalt commonly displays columnar jointing, formed as the rock cooled and contracted after solidifying from the lava.The rock fractures into columns, typically with five to six sides, parallel to the direction of heat flow out of the rock.
The amount of dust on Mars is sufficient to form a 2 to 12 meters thick layer over the entire planet. [7] [8] ... Columnar jointing on Earth.
Columnar jointing in basalt, Marte Vallis. In 2009, HiRISE discovered columnar jointing in rocks on Mars. [98] Such jointing is accepted as having involved water. To make the parallel cracks of columnar jointing, more cooling is necessary, and water is the most logical choice.