It may seem that it's easier to rip a piece of paper straight along it... until you don't have a pair of scissors and you want a straight cut so you try ripping it that way. While it may seem straight when you are looking to see how a fault like the San Andreas has ripped the crust, if you were actually trying to get a straight line when you went to rip the paper, it's unlikely you'd get it without some pre-rip modifications to the paper. The reason I say this is because I've more often wanted to actually make a straight rip in a piece of paper than not and have been frequently frustrated by the results. Creating a fold in the paper where you want to rip it helps, but doesn't guarantee the straight rip that I have frequently tried to achieve. Constraining one side along a straight edge of a harder material like a ruler or the edge of the table to coax the rip to be straight works a little better, but it still does not eliminate the annoyingly frequent meandering rips in the paper one was trying really hard to rip in a straight line. Why is it hard to rip a piece of paper in a straight line if that's what you're trying to do? I am personally of the opinion that various virtually imperceptible differences in the strength of the paper are the cause of those damn rips that veer off in an ugly way and prevent a person from actually creating a straight rip. Maybe the pulp is slightly thicker in the area or the wood grains are oriented in a somewhat perpendicular way to the intended path of the rip. Whatever the case, when the rip hits this asperity, it changes direction and makes an ugly rip that veers off to one side or another. I have personally never ever been able to rip a piece of paper without encounters at least one, and usually many more, of these places in which the rip gets all fucked up. I don't know if everyone notices this kind of thing but, being somewhat of a perfectionist, this kind of thing pisses me off and makes me wish that I hadn't been lazy and had used scissors (which also don't always cut a perfectly straight line unless the paper isn't as long as the scissor blades). I would say that any rip in anything follows the path of least resistance to the direction of the force that is ripping it apart, but I only took a handful of geology classes and just one year of physics to get my biology degree.
Thank You!!! For this confirmation of what I've being thiking since the Hector Mine event!! The Ridgecrest/China Lake event just makes it more clear, I've been watching Nick Zenter's channel and looking for more info to affirm my thoughts of the San Andreas moving to the eastern Sierra Nevada face and now with Dr. Graham Kent's presentation, this has been solidified! I'm a Fullerton boy transferred to Palm Springs and living in Morongo Valley on top of the Morongo fault near the junction with the Pinto Mountain fault. Thank You Again for allowing him to share his knowledge for all to see.
You being in Morongo Valley , I live in the '3rd' big town city going east from your's. So I don't broadcast to others where I'm at in here ..one with palmtrees . I remember the October 99 Hector Mine quake at around 430AM . It's cool you're in the over all vicinity . Personally the summers ar about Adobe road and HWY 62 get too hot for me after 42 years in the area . Being 59 age now and don't drive , have to walk nearby where I go around July . So been there and done that .
guess i should go fly fishing in my fav. streams in the owens valley before its too late.. this was a very good program... and when i am at tahoe fly fishing the area... i wont wear my waders.. i plan to wear my track shoes.. to run as fast as i can if i feel a big quake
How far, how high could you get in 3 minutes? Not very. Suggest you may wish to find new areas to fish based on modeled tsunami data, which would include being able to get high enough to be safe from such. Or, you could just take your chances. What are the odds? 😄
interesting, but the question of what california will look like in 10 million years was not really answered. there was reference to the sea of cortez being extended northward, but no supporting graphics were shown.
There are two basic possibilities, both of which are happening simultaneously and so it's a matter of timing. Either the Sea of Cortez continues to rift northward and the baja peninsula continues to "unzip from the mainland" or the central valley in CA continues to sink to a point that the whole area floods with sea water coming from San Francisco Bay. Given the transverse faults (that are just now starting to "straighten out" in his parlance) around the san diego area, you could see a flooded central valley forming an alta/baja peninsulas from san francisco to san diego to Cabo San Lucas being narrowly connected back to the mainland east of San Diego. Eventually, these alta/baja peninsulas will form one long island completely separated from the mainland.
It was a disappointing video. He never did get around to actually showing us what California could look like in 10 million years, instead he got distracted for most of the time on Lake Tahoe and the imaging technology he is working with. It started to sound more like a sales pitch for the imaging tech, than a lecture about plate tectonics.
Ummm. The science there was demonstrative of what is happening in many areas associated with these faults and rift zones; it just happens to be where he and his 'team' have been looking. Based on what he is saying, I can picture now some of what is happening, but projecting it out is a bit difficult because of all the variables, some man-made. Such as the California central valley sinking both faster and more than normal due to the removal of ground wster. What will, if anything, that do to the geological processes at work?
Fascinating dissertation. My wonder, is with the volcanic activity related to the Long Valley Caldera, specifically how many the rifting affect the increase or decrease of magma activity.
Maybe I am wrong, but I was thinking the Pacific Tectonic Plate is moving about 2 inches per year along the American Tectonic Plate, and in about 300 my San Diego will be near Oakland. But, now let's say there will be a break along the Elsinore Fault and Oceanside, CA will rotate counterclockwise to have a south-facing beach and great surf. I'm 66 years old and still fascinated by geology. My first ride on the Palm Springs Arial Tramway in 1972, was down from the top, and the bent rock that has been lifted from depth was a spectacular sight. In 1977, I flew above the San Andreas Fault in a Navy helicopter (Hollywood sign to China Lake) and was awed by the "Crack in the World". I've since learned that granite is ancient magma. Meaning there was a mile or more erodible material above today's exposed granite, which we now see about 2-miles deep under Ontario, CA. Thumbs Up and Shared.
The alignment of our faults in SoCal look kind of like a drill bit. I wonder if some part of the area is going to spin around like blocks of the ground that have done something similar to the north.
I disagree with the good Doctor (with all due respect) about the "spreading ridge" dying upon subduction. He either ignores or doesn't consider the divergent mantle upwelling associated with it, and that neither he nor anyone else fully understands enough to dismiss its role in plate tectonics. Since the divergent mantle upwelling origins are deep mantle, it's already too far under the over-riding plate to subduct; hell, look at SoCal and Baja, they over-rode the East Pacific Rise (South Farallon Spreading Ridge) and its mantle divergent upwelling (nearly everyone tends to not consider,) and subducted the ridge. The divergent upwelling didn't "die," though its tell-tale presence in the form of the ridge did disappear under the North American plate; but the divergent nature of the upwelling far below the former ridge and the over-riding plate continued its divergent affects under the over-riding plate, and is still rifting Baja and SoCal. What does he think the mechanism is under the major SoCal faults, rifts and extensions? The divergent mantle upwelling may eventually die, but it's so massive, it lives on for millions of years, but a blink of an eye in geologic time. The Farallon lives on under the continent.
That particular rift is absolutely massive. It extends down the east pacific, across the south pacific, between Australia and Antarctica, then across the Indian ocean, and the other end is the red sea. It wraps almost 3/4 of the way around the planet, like the seam of a baseball. Twice as long as the mid-Atlantic ridge. It don't think it's going to 'die' anytime soon. Some day there will be beachfront property on the "gulf of Nevada". But it's going to be an excruciatingly slow process.
We know that the NA-Pacific boundary in the Sea of Cortez and the Salton trough is mostly a strike-slip motion boundary. There is not a lot of spreading that has occurred in the Sea of Cortez. And in this video the transference of most of that relative motion away from the San Andreas to the somewhere in the Walker lane is not necessarily a dramatic spreading event. As you know from watching Zentner's videos, many commenters on his videos point out the apparent change of direction of the Pacific plate where the Hawaii chain meets Emperor seamounts. How this change in direction ca. 42mya relates to the NA-Pacific plates boundary is unclear to me, nevertheless it is clear evidence that we should not believe that plates are immutable. And likewise diverging regions do not always continue doing so (many examples around the world.) It is for reasons like this that projections of future plate motions have quite a bit of variability, and presentations newer than the one here shows not exactly what is implied in this video. Also, mantle upwellings seem to come and go as hot topics in geophysics. I have yet to see a clear presentation on the constraints to such alleged upwellings. Remember too that upward moving mantle material are literally trying to climb out of the gravity well, so we shouldn't over-emphasize any idea of "momentum" in upward motion. Again, with examples of failed rifting readily available, we shouldn't presume that mantle upwellings can't suddenly (on geologic time) just stop.
@@TheDanEdwards Hi Dan, I will respond to each of your interpretations: "We know that the NA-Pacific boundary in the Sea of Cortez and the Salton trough is mostly a strike-slip motion boundary. There is not a lot of spreading that has occurred in the Sea of Cortez. And in this video the transference of most of that relative motion away from the San Andreas to the somewhere in the Walker lane is not necessarily a dramatic spreading event." Strike-Slip is extension accommodation linearly; the SAF demarcates the adjacent margins of lateral terranes being rafted by EPR segments as part of the Pacific Plate, thus, it's diverging NW away from the Gulf spreading ridge. The crust only demarcates segments of mantle flow within a given transform fault like the SAF; thus, it doesn't limit the extent of the adjacent mantle effects. The SAF is an EPR transform fault between spreading ridge segments, and there are more Northwesterly transform faults and EPR segments to the East rafting California NW. The Strike-Slip faults demarcate those adjacent terranes as well, but they're not in opposing directions as too many assume, they're in the same direction, but at different rates and velocities (like a County Fair water-gun horse race.) I didn't imply East-West extension between SAF and WL. However, that brings me to my next point: "...with examples of failed rifting readily available, we shouldn't presume that mantle upwellings can't suddenly (on geologic time) just stop." The B&R is still extending, from Idaho into Mexico; since the EPR Spreading Ridge was connected with the JDF Spreading Ridge as the Farallon, the geology from Mendocino to Baja proves that there was a spreading ridge, and thus, Mantle upwelling below it. Since the Mantle moves and circulates in terms of inches per year, it also takes 10's of millions of years to end; thus, as NA drifted over the upwelling, it created NW-SE rifting in California, and continued East into Nevada with offsets much like spreading ridges, offsetting Northward to a point where it meets the JDF upwelling under @Medicine Lake. This is a strong argument for the B&R extension mechanism over the Mantle Plume shear theory.
That's crazy that this is published just months before the Mogul-Somersett earthquake sequence occurred. (Reno area, spring 2008) Would the rifting he's talking about cause earthquakes like those? Makes sense to me.
Wyoming has a 'Geologic History of Wyoming', why don't we? Can we get a version of that for California? More of the general statewide geology and a little more examination of how the state came to its present state, both in position and altitudes of the mountain ranges. Love the earthquake and plate tectonics subject and understand those drive everything I requested. But creation of the central valley, I know ugh plain old dirt no rocks, is interesting! It's so much dirt and it's so deep! and we get peaches and stuff from it that seriously matter when you're hungry, but not then when you go back to the geology. Just an overall 'how it got this way' at the level of a scientific public lecture, without the utterly annoying music and sound effects from entities like national geographic. Some actual data, light data as it's a public lecture not a society presentation, but some! Feel free to give the speaker more time or even have a joint presentation from various experts in different regional geology, maybe south to north since North America overran the seafloor spreading and started the transform faulting to the south, and then a wrap up session. No, just because its south to north you may not end with a triple junction rupture of the Cascadia zone, Mendocino Rift Zone, and San Andreas faults. This is the 'how we got to be so awesome with all this landscape!' not the 'how we're all going to die!' presentation. Please? Pretty please? I am sort of embarrassed Wyoming has a cool video about the entire state's geology and we dont :/ Geologists of Jackson Hole have a full hour and 17 minutes of interesting Wyoming, are you going to let them just walk all over you like that? They aren't even a university and they are sort of crushing you guys! Crushing all of us! Oh forget about California, they only care 57 minutes and only about how dramatic your horrible death from Dwayne Johnson saving someone else will be!
Sand andreas is my fault sorry guys.. Haha i would have a beer with Kent anyday. Seems like a solid dude. Aloha from lake tahoe .. Squaw Valley acadamy alumni
At 15:23 - "When these ridges [Farallon] get close to the subduction zone they actually die" . That is not a reasonable assumption. The plumes feeding them are 100s miles down. What is to say they don't continue under the overriding plate? It would help to explain Arizona's volcanism...
How could the San Andreas Fault change it's course to the Eastern California shear zone when the entire Mojave block through which those faults would have to establish themselves is itself rotating clockwise? The orientation of those faults trying to establish themselves would change so that they would no longer be able to relieve stress. It would be easier to push up new mountains as North America moves West which is probably why we have the big bend/transverse ranges in the first place. In fact,if anything,the plate boundary is moving West,not East. For example,the San Jacinto Fault is younger than the San Andreas & it's slip rate seems to be increasing and it is West of the San Andreas Fault.
The pacific place is moving laterally against the north American place in California, which is causing the Sierra Nevada mountains to peel off of north America. They are behaving as one big solid chunk, that is interfering with that sliding of plate boundaries, forcing a tear up into eastern California. You can see teh start of that 'peeling off' in how the southern tip of the sierras curl west, as the mojave pushes to the northwest. The San Andreas is more like a 'side swipe' car collision, when another car tries to merge into the same lane as you, than a 'head on' collision, as is the case up with the Cascadia fault. The North American plate and the pacific plate are almost moving the same direction in California.
Were the dynamics discussed here vertically the same but horizontally the opposite and existing on the east coast, wouldn't you then say 'left hand'? Or is this a hemispheric statement? Or a world-wide statement? Or just a regional semi-hemispheric generalization? Not every continent is drifting the same direction. Methinks you must be more specific.
Obviously we are very grateful for the lecture / talk. It was great, especially the 3D under water models. ( " PLEASE " ) remember one of the reasons, you have lectures like this is to gather community support for your work, "very important". With that in mind, you want to have as large an audience as possible, for maximum effect, and dissemination of seismic data . (" Please" ) go down to Home Depot and by yourself a ( dowel ) like the one old teachers used to point to the critical areas on the graphics, because the RUclips audience etc. "can't see the damned laser pointer". We miss about 1/3 to1/2 of what is being described, because of that, so your losing audience. It's more important than you think. Maybe if you try real hard you can find a real antique pointer, with the eyelet screw on one end to hang it up next tot the chalk board, or your new "sissy" white board, and a little pointy rubber tip on the other end. They are great for beating on uncooperative students, and audience members. Thanks.
A quick FYI: "sierra" is never used in the plural when referring to a single range. "Sierra" means "saw" in Spanish and is used to refer to a range of mountains that when viewed from the side appear as a jagged edge. The Sierra Nevada should never be called "the Sierras." Also, the 'h' in bahía is silent.
My dear pretentious english critic: The 'Sierra Mountains' refers to those individual teeth (mountains) in the saw. Indubitedly we shorten it to 'The Sierras' so as not to write so much. As a slang term, everyone knows what is meant, even though the proper grammer is ignored. Since slang is a part of our vernacular, I suppose your stuffy correct grammer has it's place, but not so much in this informal discussion here. 😁
Yes, thank you, wonderful information, however I do think you're pushing it suggesting 'I don't see a plane' , I mean agreed, but by that metric, even the more defined faults are hardly Platonic planes.
We live in what is called the Pleistocene Ice Age which began some 2.8 million years ago. Melt both ice caps and you still would not reach the Sierra's for "beachfront property". The sliver of geologic time we live in today is called the Holocene Epoch, and it is the 11,723 years since we melted our way out of the Wisconsin Glacial. Problem is the Holocene is pretty much kaput as only 1 of the last 10 interglacials has lasted more than half a precession cycle (which varies between 9,500 and 11,500 years. So far, we only know of one thing, and one thing only, which can ameliorate glacial inception. Do you know what that is? Greenhouse gases, of all things.
@@kennethnewman5522 Actually, not. The coastal region is slowly drifting north towards Canada. There's a lot of geoscience people that are becoming very convinced of the accuracy of the Baja/BC theory. Quite a lot of very very strong evidence to support the fact that large regions of coastal British Columbia used to share a common latitude with Mexico. Now, ya wanna talk about a coastal region that's sinking into the sea? Try the area from Louisiana to the panhandle of Florida. GPS has impacted the science of plate tectonics in such a positive and massive way! It's been like the impact of microscopes on microbiology!
Wrong. My grandkids individually have at least 70 more years. The planet has a very long time. Mankind? Who knows. We may have a couple years, or several thousand. If you refer to religious beliefs of the Lord's second coming, yet will there be at least a millenia after, here. (Those same beliefs) It's quite possible we don't blow ourselves up, and global warming gets countered more including by natural processes. I'd say 50 is highly pessimistic and also inaccurate!
Hahaha, I hope you're not serious. Scientists say that the sun won't start swelling for another 2 billion years. That's about when the oceans will boil. And It will probably be another 5 billion years until the sun has a chance of hitting the Earth and swallowing it. Sorry, but the Earth is going to last for billions of years to come.
Life on this planet may not last, however. We need to advance enough to go to other star systems while we still can develop the necessary tech. Or we can act like an open pot of lobsters, and keep each other on this rock in space due to our own squabbles among our selves here. Human nature being what it is, I'd say it's 50-50 whether we do or don't.
When we look at the many horizontal strata that we find everywhere on our planet, we see clearly the effect of a repeating natural event. These strata are caused by a regularly recurring disaster. These disasters are mentioned in ancient books as the Mahabharata from India and the Popol Vuh from the Maya and others. They tell us about a cycle of seven disasters that separate world eras. Regularly recurring disasters can certainly not been caused by asteroid impacts or volcanic eruptions. The only possible cause can be another celestial body, most likely a planet, that orbits our sun in an eccentric orbit. Then it is near the sun for only a short period and after the crossing it runs into the universe for a long time. Planet 9 exists, but seems to be invisible. These disasters cause a huge tidal wave of seawater that is pulled over the earth. At the end it covers the earth with a layer of mud, a mix of sand, clay, fossils from sea and land animals and meteors. They also create a cycle of civilizations. To learn much more about the cycle of recurring floods and its timeline, the recreation of civilizations and ancient high technology, read the eBook: "Planet 9 = Nibiru". You can read it nicely on any computer, tablet or smartphone. Search for: invisible nibiru 9
10 million years is quite interesting but something more current would be a little more... telling most of us know from general knowledge California is going to slip away eventually
I’m sure this is a nice man , very intelligent, but how do so many smart people believe when they are taught the 50 million or billions of years old. The earth is not that old.
Sir, I find your "intellectual" presentation, with your "cartoons", very insulting. It was probably meant to illicit a laugh or two from the ignorant audience. Were you talking to kindergarteners, or just paid by your sponsors, beautiful pictures notwithstanding? If you were going to mention the Pacific Northwest area of our Country, you should've mentioned Siletzia. The ridges adjoined to this area is because of the Juan de Fuca Plate subducting under the North American Plate, which is traveling Southwesterly itself. The Cascadia volcano region of the Pacific Northwest is because of a "hotspot" traveling Northeasterly, or better stated, our North America Plate is, because of plate tectonics, "moving" Southwesterly, where, now, our Yellowstone National Park is located. This movement is nowhere close to the San Andreas Fault system, which is a vertical tear of our earth. And, the only "good thing" to say about Baja California, is that because of the San Andreas and plate tectonics, BC will probably "tear-off" from its present location, and "travel" northwesterly, and adjoin either to Northwestern Canada, or maybe even Alaska. Make these points evident in your funny lecture, and to the ignorant attendee(s).
Currently, Cscadia extends down into Northern California, but eons from now will die and become volcanically inactive.and a different hotspot that used to be in California is now in central oregon, but influenced certain geographies and geologies here. The presenter also failed to mention the granitic nature of the Sierra Nevada mountains is due to their being magma that once fed volcanoes, instead simply saying they formed very deep in the earth, which of course is accurate bit somewhat incomplete. His emphasis was faulting and rifting and tectonics, and earthquakes; but did not fully explain all he could have on California's past. Yet, his time was limited. Both of you have valid points, but there is zero reason for either of you to insult. 🙄
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Watching this nearly fifteen years ...
It may seem that it's easier to rip a piece of paper straight along it... until you don't have a pair of scissors and you want a straight cut so you try ripping it that way. While it may seem straight when you are looking to see how a fault like the San Andreas has ripped the crust, if you were actually trying to get a straight line when you went to rip the paper, it's unlikely you'd get it without some pre-rip modifications to the paper.
The reason I say this is because I've more often wanted to actually make a straight rip in a piece of paper than not and have been frequently frustrated by the results. Creating a fold in the paper where you want to rip it helps, but doesn't guarantee the straight rip that I have frequently tried to achieve. Constraining one side along a straight edge of a harder material like a ruler or the edge of the table to coax the rip to be straight works a little better, but it still does not eliminate the annoyingly frequent meandering rips in the paper one was trying really hard to rip in a straight line.
Why is it hard to rip a piece of paper in a straight line if that's what you're trying to do? I am personally of the opinion that various virtually imperceptible differences in the strength of the paper are the cause of those damn rips that veer off in an ugly way and prevent a person from actually creating a straight rip. Maybe the pulp is slightly thicker in the area or the wood grains are oriented in a somewhat perpendicular way to the intended path of the rip. Whatever the case, when the rip hits this asperity, it changes direction and makes an ugly rip that veers off to one side or another. I have personally never ever been able to rip a piece of paper without encounters at least one, and usually many more, of these places in which the rip gets all fucked up. I don't know if everyone notices this kind of thing but, being somewhat of a perfectionist, this kind of thing pisses me off and makes me wish that I hadn't been lazy and had used scissors (which also don't always cut a perfectly straight line unless the paper isn't as long as the scissor blades).
I would say that any rip in anything follows the path of least resistance to the direction of the force that is ripping it apart, but I only took a handful of geology classes and just one year of physics to get my biology degree.
Wow, those 2008 computer graphics blew my mind.
"Groundbreaking science"- no pun intended. Interesting. Thanks.
Liar! Definitely intended. 😄😄
Great video! Thanks for posting.
So easy to listen to and great teaching Ability
Thank You!!! For this confirmation of what I've being thiking since the Hector Mine event!! The Ridgecrest/China Lake event just makes it more clear, I've been watching Nick Zenter's channel and looking for more info to affirm my thoughts of the San Andreas moving to the eastern Sierra Nevada face and now with Dr. Graham Kent's presentation, this has been solidified! I'm a Fullerton boy transferred to Palm Springs and living in Morongo Valley on top of the Morongo fault near the junction with the Pinto Mountain fault. Thank You Again for allowing him to share his knowledge for all to see.
You being in Morongo Valley , I live in the '3rd' big town city going east from your's. So I don't broadcast to others where I'm at in here ..one with palmtrees . I remember the October 99 Hector Mine quake at around 430AM . It's cool you're in the over all vicinity . Personally the summers ar about Adobe road and HWY 62 get too hot for me after 42 years in the area . Being 59 age now and don't drive , have to walk nearby where I go around July . So been there and done that .
Excellent presentation with a wealth of fault information.
guess i should go fly fishing in my fav. streams in the owens valley before its too late.. this was a very good program... and when i am at tahoe fly fishing the area... i wont wear my waders.. i plan to wear my track shoes.. to run as fast as i can if i feel a big quake
How far, how high could you get in 3 minutes? Not very. Suggest you may wish to find new areas to fish based on modeled tsunami data, which would include being able to get high enough to be safe from such. Or, you could just take your chances. What are the odds? 😄
How about that! Ridgecrest/Trona 7.1 earthquake July 4, 2019 AND CONTINUING TODAY.
We get some small quakes here in west Texas west and northwest of where I live. I don't own any property out there, so I know it's not my fault!
You fracker. 😄😄. Oh, wait. Hard to frack without property. My apologies. 😁
interesting, but the question of what california will look like in 10 million years was not really answered. there was reference to the sea of cortez being extended northward, but no supporting graphics were shown.
There are two basic possibilities, both of which are happening simultaneously and so it's a matter of timing. Either the Sea of Cortez continues to rift northward and the baja peninsula continues to "unzip from the mainland" or the central valley in CA continues to sink to a point that the whole area floods with sea water coming from San Francisco Bay. Given the transverse faults (that are just now starting to "straighten out" in his parlance) around the san diego area, you could see a flooded central valley forming an alta/baja peninsulas from san francisco to san diego to Cabo San Lucas being narrowly connected back to the mainland east of San Diego. Eventually, these alta/baja peninsulas will form one long island completely separated from the mainland.
It was a disappointing video. He never did get around to actually showing us what California could look like in 10 million years, instead he got distracted for most of the time on Lake Tahoe and the imaging technology he is working with. It started to sound more like a sales pitch for the imaging tech, than a lecture about plate tectonics.
Ummm. The science there was demonstrative of what is happening in many areas associated with these faults and rift zones; it just happens to be where he and his 'team' have been looking. Based on what he is saying, I can picture now some of what is happening, but projecting it out is a bit difficult because of all the variables, some man-made. Such as the California central valley sinking both faster and more than normal due to the removal of ground wster. What will, if anything, that do to the geological processes at work?
Fascinating dissertation. My wonder, is with the volcanic activity related to the Long Valley Caldera, specifically how many the rifting affect the increase or decrease of magma activity.
Maybe I am wrong, but I was thinking the Pacific Tectonic Plate is moving about 2 inches per year along the American Tectonic Plate, and in about 300 my San Diego will be near Oakland. But, now let's say there will be a break along the Elsinore Fault and Oceanside, CA will rotate counterclockwise to have a south-facing beach and great surf. I'm 66 years old and still fascinated by geology. My first ride on the Palm Springs Arial Tramway in 1972, was down from the top, and the bent rock that has been lifted from depth was a spectacular sight. In 1977, I flew above the San Andreas Fault in a Navy helicopter (Hollywood sign to China Lake) and was awed by the "Crack in the World". I've since learned that granite is ancient magma. Meaning there was a mile or more erodible material above today's exposed granite, which we now see about 2-miles deep under Ontario, CA. Thumbs Up and Shared.
They left out three Faults:
My Fault.
Your Fault, and
Not My Fault.
The alignment of our faults in SoCal look kind of like a drill bit. I wonder if some part of the area is going to spin around like blocks of the ground that have done something similar to the north.
Awesome information. Great work
Fascinating... riveting... in spite of what others comment here.
Wow, that was just incrediable, only wish is that the film would have better resolution. very fuzzy
Commifornia: exists “panik!!”
Commifornia: sinks “kalm!”
Maybe I should buy property in Lone Pine and have some nice seashore property.
I disagree with the good Doctor (with all due respect) about the "spreading ridge" dying upon subduction. He either ignores or doesn't consider the divergent mantle upwelling associated with it, and that neither he nor anyone else fully understands enough to dismiss its role in plate tectonics.
Since the divergent mantle upwelling origins are deep mantle, it's already too far under the over-riding plate to subduct; hell, look at SoCal and Baja, they over-rode the East Pacific Rise (South Farallon Spreading Ridge) and its mantle divergent upwelling (nearly everyone tends to not consider,) and subducted the ridge. The divergent upwelling didn't "die," though its tell-tale presence in the form of the ridge did disappear under the North American plate; but the divergent nature of the upwelling far below the former ridge and the over-riding plate continued its divergent affects under the over-riding plate, and is still rifting Baja and SoCal.
What does he think the mechanism is under the major SoCal faults, rifts and extensions? The divergent mantle upwelling may eventually die, but it's so massive, it lives on for millions of years, but a blink of an eye in geologic time. The Farallon lives on under the continent.
That particular rift is absolutely massive. It extends down the east pacific, across the south pacific, between Australia and Antarctica, then across the Indian ocean, and the other end is the red sea. It wraps almost 3/4 of the way around the planet, like the seam of a baseball. Twice as long as the mid-Atlantic ridge.
It don't think it's going to 'die' anytime soon.
Some day there will be beachfront property on the "gulf of Nevada". But it's going to be an excruciatingly slow process.
We know that the NA-Pacific boundary in the Sea of Cortez and the Salton trough is mostly a strike-slip motion boundary. There is not a lot of spreading that has occurred in the Sea of Cortez. And in this video the transference of most of that relative motion away from the San Andreas to the somewhere in the Walker lane is not necessarily a dramatic spreading event.
As you know from watching Zentner's videos, many commenters on his videos point out the apparent change of direction of the Pacific plate where the Hawaii chain meets Emperor seamounts. How this change in direction ca. 42mya relates to the NA-Pacific plates boundary is unclear to me, nevertheless it is clear evidence that we should not believe that plates are immutable. And likewise diverging regions do not always continue doing so (many examples around the world.) It is for reasons like this that projections of future plate motions have quite a bit of variability, and presentations newer than the one here shows not exactly what is implied in this video.
Also, mantle upwellings seem to come and go as hot topics in geophysics. I have yet to see a clear presentation on the constraints to such alleged upwellings. Remember too that upward moving mantle material are literally trying to climb out of the gravity well, so we shouldn't over-emphasize any idea of "momentum" in upward motion. Again, with examples of failed rifting readily available, we shouldn't presume that mantle upwellings can't suddenly (on geologic time) just stop.
@@TheDanEdwards Hi Dan,
I will respond to each of your interpretations:
"We know that the NA-Pacific boundary in the Sea of Cortez and the Salton trough is mostly a strike-slip motion boundary. There is not a lot of spreading that has occurred in the Sea of Cortez. And in this video the transference of most of that relative motion away from the San Andreas to the somewhere in the Walker lane is not necessarily a dramatic spreading event."
Strike-Slip is extension accommodation linearly; the SAF demarcates the adjacent margins of lateral terranes being rafted by EPR segments as part of the Pacific Plate, thus, it's diverging NW away from the Gulf spreading ridge. The crust only demarcates segments of mantle flow within a given transform fault like the SAF; thus, it doesn't limit the extent of the adjacent mantle effects. The SAF is an EPR transform fault between spreading ridge segments, and there are more Northwesterly transform faults and EPR segments to the East rafting California NW. The Strike-Slip faults demarcate those adjacent terranes as well, but they're not in opposing directions as too many assume, they're in the same direction, but at different rates and velocities (like a County Fair water-gun horse race.) I didn't imply East-West extension between SAF and WL. However, that brings me to my next point:
"...with examples of failed rifting readily available, we shouldn't presume that mantle upwellings can't suddenly (on geologic time) just stop."
The B&R is still extending, from Idaho into Mexico; since the EPR Spreading Ridge was connected with the JDF Spreading Ridge as the Farallon, the geology from Mendocino to Baja proves that there was a spreading ridge, and thus, Mantle upwelling below it. Since the Mantle moves and circulates in terms of inches per year, it also takes 10's of millions of years to end; thus, as NA drifted over the upwelling, it created NW-SE rifting in California, and continued East into Nevada with offsets much like spreading ridges, offsetting Northward to a point where it meets the JDF upwelling under @Medicine Lake. This is a strong argument for the B&R extension mechanism over the Mantle Plume shear theory.
That's crazy that this is published just months before the Mogul-Somersett earthquake sequence occurred. (Reno area, spring 2008) Would the rifting he's talking about cause earthquakes like those? Makes sense to me.
Wyoming has a 'Geologic History of Wyoming', why don't we?
Can we get a version of that for California? More of the general statewide geology and a little more examination of how the state came to its present state, both in position and altitudes of the mountain ranges. Love the earthquake and plate tectonics subject and understand those drive everything I requested. But creation of the central valley, I know ugh plain old dirt no rocks, is interesting! It's so much dirt and it's so deep! and we get peaches and stuff from it that seriously matter when you're hungry, but not then when you go back to the geology.
Just an overall 'how it got this way' at the level of a scientific public lecture, without the utterly annoying music and sound effects from entities like national geographic. Some actual data, light data as it's a public lecture not a society presentation, but some!
Feel free to give the speaker more time or even have a joint presentation from various experts in different regional geology, maybe south to north since North America overran the seafloor spreading and started the transform faulting to the south, and then a wrap up session. No, just because its south to north you may not end with a triple junction rupture of the Cascadia zone, Mendocino Rift Zone, and San Andreas faults. This is the 'how we got to be so awesome with all this landscape!' not the 'how we're all going to die!' presentation.
Please? Pretty please? I am sort of embarrassed Wyoming has a cool video about the entire state's geology and we dont :/ Geologists of Jackson Hole have a full hour and 17 minutes of interesting Wyoming, are you going to let them just walk all over you like that? They aren't even a university and they are sort of crushing you guys! Crushing all of us! Oh forget about California, they only care 57 minutes and only about how dramatic your horrible death from Dwayne Johnson saving someone else will be!
thank you
Sand andreas is my fault sorry guys.. Haha i would have a beer with Kent anyday. Seems like a solid dude. Aloha from lake tahoe .. Squaw Valley acadamy alumni
Excellent video.
Very nice report.
Neat talk.
At 15:23 - "When these ridges [Farallon] get close to the subduction zone they actually die" . That is not a reasonable assumption. The plumes feeding them are 100s miles down. What is to say they don't continue under the overriding plate? It would help to explain Arizona's volcanism...
It appears the continental rock does significantly slow the rift down though. But I agree, I don't think it died completely.
How could the San Andreas Fault change it's course to the Eastern California shear zone when the entire Mojave block through which those faults would have to establish themselves is itself rotating clockwise? The orientation of those faults trying to establish themselves would change so that they would no longer be able to relieve stress. It would be easier to push up new mountains as North America moves West which is probably why we have the big bend/transverse ranges in the first place. In fact,if anything,the plate boundary is moving West,not East. For example,the San Jacinto Fault is younger than the San Andreas & it's slip rate seems to be increasing and it is West of the San Andreas Fault.
The pacific place is moving laterally against the north American place in California, which is causing the Sierra Nevada mountains to peel off of north America. They are behaving as one big solid chunk, that is interfering with that sliding of plate boundaries, forcing a tear up into eastern California. You can see teh start of that 'peeling off' in how the southern tip of the sierras curl west, as the mojave pushes to the northwest.
The San Andreas is more like a 'side swipe' car collision, when another car tries to merge into the same lane as you, than a 'head on' collision, as is the case up with the Cascadia fault.
The North American plate and the pacific plate are almost moving the same direction in California.
Graham Kent gave this talk on Valentine's day (2005?)
At the right hand of a triple point junction you will have rifting. Triple point Cape Mendocino down to Baja California.
Were the dynamics discussed here vertically the same but horizontally the opposite and existing on the east coast, wouldn't you then say 'left hand'? Or is this a hemispheric statement? Or a world-wide statement? Or just a regional semi-hemispheric generalization? Not every continent is drifting the same direction. Methinks you must be more specific.
Obviously we are very grateful for the lecture / talk. It was great, especially the 3D under water models. ( " PLEASE " ) remember one of the reasons, you have lectures like this is to gather community support for your work, "very important". With that in mind, you want to have as large an audience as possible, for maximum effect, and dissemination of seismic data . (" Please" ) go down to Home Depot and by yourself a ( dowel ) like the one old teachers used to point to the critical areas on the graphics, because the RUclips audience etc. "can't see the damned laser pointer". We miss about 1/3 to1/2 of what is being described, because of that, so your losing audience. It's more important than you think. Maybe if you try real hard you can find a real antique pointer, with the eyelet screw on one end to hang it up next tot the chalk board, or your new "sissy" white board, and a little pointy rubber tip on the other end. They are great for beating on uncooperative students, and audience members. Thanks.
What? Tahoe doesn't have beaches now?
sea beaches, salt water from the Pacific beaches.
A quick FYI: "sierra" is never used in the plural when referring to a single range. "Sierra" means "saw" in Spanish and is used to refer to a range of mountains that when viewed from the side appear as a jagged edge. The Sierra Nevada should never be called "the Sierras." Also, the 'h' in bahía is silent.
Ken Adair That's correct in spanish, since it's been English-sized it creates a whole new conglomeration..
The USA won those territories in battle, and so to the victor goes the spoils. We can name the mountains how ever we like.
Bla, bla bla, who cares about proper grammer, wordie.
My dear pretentious english critic: The 'Sierra Mountains' refers to those individual teeth (mountains) in the saw. Indubitedly we shorten it to 'The Sierras' so as not to write so much. As a slang term, everyone knows what is meant, even though the proper grammer is ignored. Since slang is a part of our vernacular, I suppose your stuffy correct grammer has it's place, but not so much in this informal discussion here. 😁
The text says he's Kent Graham! WTF?
Yes, thank you, wonderful information, however I do think you're pushing it suggesting 'I don't see a plane' , I mean agreed, but by that metric, even the more defined faults are hardly Platonic planes.
very interesting - perhaps - but I could not stay after roughly 20 "uhms" in three minutes. A course in public speaking is indicated.
Ratio of ads to lecture.
17:50 He might look up the 3 New Madrid Quakes (1811-1812) in the central states (Mississippi Valley) and the 1964 Alaskan Quake.
Nice
Our species of human will not be around in 10 million years.
We live in what is called the Pleistocene Ice Age which began some 2.8 million years ago. Melt both ice caps and you still would not reach the Sierra's for "beachfront property". The sliver of geologic time we live in today is called the Holocene Epoch, and it is the 11,723 years since we melted our way out of the Wisconsin Glacial. Problem is the Holocene is pretty much kaput as only 1 of the last 10 interglacials has lasted more than half a precession cycle (which varies between 9,500 and 11,500 years. So far, we only know of one thing, and one thing only, which can ameliorate glacial inception. Do you know what that is? Greenhouse gases, of all things.
@lordpatrice i care damn it
Quick, easy and very reliable IQ test. If someone says "California's gonna fall into the ocean" you have a graduate of special ed.
Perhaps it might be more accurate to say that California may slowly be submerged. Or not. 😄
@@kennethnewman5522 Actually, not. The coastal region is slowly drifting north towards Canada. There's a lot of geoscience people that are becoming very convinced of the accuracy of the Baja/BC theory. Quite a lot of very very strong evidence to support the fact that large regions of coastal British Columbia used to share a common latitude with Mexico.
Now, ya wanna talk about a coastal region that's sinking into the sea? Try the area from Louisiana to the panhandle of Florida. GPS has impacted the science of plate tectonics in such a positive and massive way! It's been like the impact of microscopes on microbiology!
I like futuristic geology
problem is we have less than 50 years...
You're probably right.
Wrong. My grandkids individually have at least 70 more years. The planet has a very long time. Mankind? Who knows. We may have a couple years, or several thousand. If you refer to religious beliefs of the Lord's second coming, yet will there be at least a millenia after, here. (Those same beliefs) It's quite possible we don't blow ourselves up, and global warming gets countered more including by natural processes. I'd say 50 is highly pessimistic and also inaccurate!
Hahaha, I hope you're not serious. Scientists say that the sun won't start swelling for another 2 billion years. That's about when the oceans will boil. And It will probably be another 5 billion years until the sun has a chance of hitting the Earth and swallowing it. Sorry, but the Earth is going to last for billions of years to come.
Life on this planet may not last, however. We need to advance enough to go to other star systems while we still can develop the necessary tech. Or we can act like an open pot of lobsters, and keep each other on this rock in space due to our own squabbles among our selves here. Human nature being what it is, I'd say it's 50-50 whether we do or don't.
How much did they pay him to secure the real Real Estate of Ca.?
When we look at the many horizontal strata that we find everywhere on our planet, we see clearly the effect of a repeating natural event. These strata are caused by a regularly recurring disaster. These disasters are mentioned in ancient books as the Mahabharata from India and the Popol Vuh from the Maya and others. They tell us about a cycle of seven disasters that separate world eras. Regularly recurring disasters can certainly not been caused by asteroid impacts or volcanic eruptions. The only possible cause can be another celestial body, most likely a planet, that orbits our sun in an eccentric orbit. Then it is near the sun for only a short period and after the crossing it runs into the universe for a long time. Planet 9 exists, but seems to be invisible. These disasters cause a huge tidal wave of seawater that is pulled over the earth. At the end it covers the earth with a layer of mud, a mix of sand, clay, fossils from sea and land animals and meteors.
They also create a cycle of civilizations. To learn much more about the cycle of recurring floods and its timeline, the recreation of civilizations and ancient high technology, read the eBook: "Planet 9 = Nibiru". You can read it nicely on any computer, tablet or smartphone. Search for: invisible nibiru 9
15:47
10 million years is quite interesting but something more current would be a little more... telling most of us know from general knowledge California is going to slip away eventually
57 minutes.....never mind.
Learn to swim
See ya down in Arizona Bay!
Duthunsence
I know where im buying land
I’m sure this is a nice man , very intelligent, but how do so many smart people believe when they are taught the 50 million or billions of years old. The earth is not that old.
Seriously?!? 10 ads in a 1 hour video?? GTF!!!
I saw no ads. But I pay for youtube premium.
@@michaelhusar3668
Well whoopy fuckin doo... get lost RUclips employee 🙄
I like the info but your dateing is faults. Unless you have true facts about your dateing its all guessing.
neither do i. sorry! 57min?nope
Whos cares we wont be there to see it, and probably california will be at the bottom of the sea.
The Earth itself will be dead in 10 million years. Nothing will be here except a giant rock that will be consumed by our Star.
Sir, I find your "intellectual" presentation, with your "cartoons", very insulting. It was probably meant to illicit a laugh or two from the ignorant audience. Were you talking to kindergarteners, or just paid by your sponsors, beautiful pictures notwithstanding?
If you were going to mention the Pacific Northwest area of our Country, you should've mentioned Siletzia. The ridges adjoined to this area is because of the Juan de Fuca Plate subducting under the North American Plate, which is traveling Southwesterly itself.
The Cascadia volcano region of the Pacific Northwest is because of a "hotspot" traveling Northeasterly, or better stated, our North America Plate is, because of plate tectonics, "moving" Southwesterly, where, now, our Yellowstone National Park is located. This movement is nowhere close to the San Andreas Fault system, which is a vertical tear of our earth.
And, the only "good thing" to say about Baja California, is that because of the San Andreas and plate tectonics, BC will probably "tear-off" from its present location, and "travel" northwesterly, and adjoin either to Northwestern Canada, or maybe even Alaska.
Make these points evident in your funny lecture, and to the ignorant attendee(s).
Dipshit, it's a lecture about CALIFORNIA, not the Pacific Northwest.
Currently, Cscadia extends down into Northern California, but eons from now will die and become volcanically inactive.and a different hotspot that used to be in California is now in central oregon, but influenced certain geographies and geologies here. The presenter also failed to mention the granitic nature of the Sierra Nevada mountains is due to their being magma that once fed volcanoes, instead simply saying they formed very deep in the earth, which of course is accurate bit somewhat incomplete. His emphasis was faulting and rifting and tectonics, and earthquakes; but did not fully explain all he could have on California's past. Yet, his time was limited. Both of you have valid points, but there is zero reason for either of you to insult. 🙄