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Mercury Rising!!! 🌡️💕💕💕💕🤒 It’s getting hot in here!! 👙Global warming is the planet warming up to each other!! 🐨🐨 The Big Bang Theory!! Gravity is memory!!🐘 🐾 🥁 We’re each a particle, photon or star; cosmic surfing!!!🏄♂️ 🏄♀️ When this wave collapses seems to depend on us. The physics!! 👩🔬 We’re all fizzicists!! 🥤 Mount Shasta is the root!! ⛰️ Root beer!! 🍺 🐻 Big bear!!! Big bear chase me!!! The Great Outdoors!!🐾 🌲 🐾🌲🐾🌲🐾🌲 The 7 goddesses of the Pleiades!! 💎💎💎💎💎💎💎 After I personally tie the knot with them, we’ll create the figure 8 and become infinite!! Astronauts and cosmonauts!! Naughty!! 🪢 🧑🚀🎱😂 My Russian nesting dolls!! 🪺 My fine China!!! 🍽️ Each thought represents a bang❗️Higher vibrational thoughts 🐝🐝🐝 will create bigger bangs‼️ Pebbles And Bam Bam!! 🧊 🦕 🧊 🦖 🧊 🦣 🧊 Each grain of sand or pebble, a building block for planets or dark matter!! 🪨 Dark energy aka consciousness, creates the bang!! Supernovae!! 💥 Super Moons!! Flowery moons!! 🌹 Saturn a flowery moon!! Representing the 6th dimension!! More energy!!🪐 🛸 We control it!! 🧞 We’re stars!!✨ Hi, Hey, Hello!!🦜 The more G’s, the better!! They’ll reflect our minds, technology and more!! G strings!! 👙 👙👙👙 Our brains look like gum!! 🧠 Juicier the better!!!🍏🍋🟩🫐🍍🍎🍌🍈🥥🍐🍉🍒🥝🍊🍇🍑🍋🍓🥭 Love everything until it loves you back!! Mosquitos too!!🦟 ❤ Love cancer!! The Crab Nebula!! 🎇 Don’t be crabby!!🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀 Nothing transcends space and time more than love!! 💗 Love is a spaceship!! Taking us higher!!✈️ 🚀 🛸 The greatest attraction in the universe!! 🎪 Each of us and each galaxy would represent a cell!! 🦠 We’re stars putting ourselves back together again!! Like Humpty Dumpty!! 🥚 🐓 The sky is blue because we’re meant to imagine it as a diamond!! The auroras then create the rest of the spectrum!! 🌈 💎 A purple sky would reflect the heart of the ocean!! An opened mind!! 🤯 The earth purring more!! Purrrrrple rain!!☔️ 🐈⬛ 🧶 Each thought to me is a solar flare, which shifts us into parallel worlds!! It’s hard here!!! I’m a peaceful dude, yet my life here has been super difficult!!🥹 Alpha Centauri represents a shift in consciousness!! Dog planet!! We’re riding the alpha waves!! Woof woof!!🐶 🐾 This is our world peace and enlightenment for the world and universe!! All is one!!😇🥳🥰🤩 We’re each a mini universe!!🌌 The 3 Body Problem represents our gut brain, 🍱 heart,❤️ and mind!! 🧠 Connecting mind, body, soul, and spirit!! The Holy Spirit becomes whole!! A glory hole!!! 🔆 The moon is a black hole!! 🕳️ A neutrino!! The planet is a colonized moon!!😇🌍👽 The sun is a shapeshifter!! 🌞 Are you and I sculpting together as a team or as individuals??? 🧑🎨 Using the moon as a tool!!! 🪨 The Sun is the eye!!👁️ I love the tool/word grinder!!!😮 We’d be Bumping and Grinding!!😂 The Earth is like a refrigerator and the atmospheric pressure is melting or defrosting the stars above, as if they’ve been in the freezer!! 🥶 It would also reflect us krystalyzing and becoming diamonds in the sky!! 💎 💎💎 Lucy becomes Maisie!! 🐒 👽 We could be stars from above aka heaven, melting everything from above, as well! Like a River Running Through It!!! 🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊 Gravitational waves or our thoughts raining down on us through higher dimensions!!! 🌧️ Pass the doobie to the left hand side!!🇯🇲🍍 Unlocking a Secret Garden within and outside of us!!🤫 An Oasis!!!🏝️ 🏝️🏝️🏝️🏝️ Flowing!!! It helps a lot to flow!!!🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊 Letting go, so we can concentrate more and work on our project!! Heaven On Earth!!🌍 👼 Flowers!! 🌺 🌸 💐 and Flow-Ers!!🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊 I know energy is still impurrtant!! 😻 And of course imagination!!! Love!!!💗 🐶 🎾 🧶 🐈⬛ To create heaven On Earth, the galaxies collide!! 🌌 Twin flames connect!! 🔥 🔥 We’re creating quantum entanglement!! Ghost particles merging, becoming more like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man!!👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻 The universe is still the Earth!!⭐️🌍⭐️ We’re seeing it from the insides!! 🕵️ Like we’re inside a volcano 🌋 or wishing well!! The stars and galaxies are like coins!!🪙 The Goonies vibes!! 💀 We’re treasure!! Antarctica is treasure island!! 🐧🇦🇶 Unlocking antimatter!! 🐜 Booby and booty traps exposed!! Planet X!! Hubba Hubba!!🥰 Everything and everyone has been our teacher!!👩🏫 3D is like the murky bottom of a bong or volcano!!🌋 The fourth dimension, representing Mars is like the stem of the bong or the volcanos vent!! 👽 Experiencing higher dimensions is like the smoke or magma reaching our mouths 😋 and then circulating through our bodies!! We are the Earth!!🌍 👼 The road less traveled!!!🧳 🌹 Straight up!! 🎈 🎈🎈🎈🎈We’d be super condensed or extremely packed neutron stars!! Like Rigel!! Blueberries!! Antioxidants!! Betelgeuse has evolved into a neutron star!! 🍊🫐 Our long winding road, exploring different dimensions, finally straightening out!! I’m getting Pee Wee vibes!! Large Marge sent me!!🚴😂 We’re vaporized, as if we’ve been smoked or roasted!! 💨 The smoke representing again those compressed neutron stars climbing the higher dimensions of the universe like a chimney!! I’m Mary Poppins, y’all !! ☂️ 🧞♀️ It would also represent us as a comet traveling through a wormhole!! 💫 Who me, I’m just a worm!!🐛 🫖 Solving a labyrinth!! 🦉 Solving amaze!!! 🦋 Different energies tell a different story!! 📚 We’re storytellers!! Artists!!🧑🎨 We’re energy first!! 🐝 A 12 inch boner is like receiving a foot of snow!!⛄️ 😂 When powered by neutrons and a magnetar energy field, one is like the energizer bunny!!🐰 They’ll keep going and going and going!! 🐇 🐇🐇🐇🐇 If you’re destined to have more than one twin flame, you’re like Frogger, playing leap frog!! Lucy is a sucker for Lillies!! 🐸 🍀 🐸 🍀 🐸🍀🐸🍀🐸 G Force!!!🥳👙🥳👙🥳👙🥳👙🥳 Dorothy’s Ruby red slippers!! ❤❤ Something here in 3D land has to change, yes, mmmmm! Dark Crystal Series!!😍 🧚🏼 We need to get this show rolling!! 🎥 We need our second moon!! Two moons!!! Two Mercurys!! Two black holes!!🕳️ 🕳️ They’ll need some color!! 🌈 Two blood moons!! 🩸 🩸 Two Ruby red slippers!!🥿 🥿 We have to die and become reborn!! Dye!! Dye those slippers red!!😮❤❤😂 Makes complete sense!! 🤯 There’s no place like home!! Home is where the heart is!! Jupiter and the 5th dimension!! 🐸 🍀 Clover Field!!👽 🛸 Time speeds up real fast once we’re there because seeing is definitely believing!! We get excited, hearts start pumping!! 💕 Minds start to open up!! 💜 Oxytocin pumping through our blood!! A love signature!! ✍️ Removing our writers block!! We’re storytellers!! 📚 The two blood moons also like draculas fangs!! Or the fangs of a snake and spider!! A kundalini experience!!!🐍💜 An anti venom!! 🐜 A love bite!! I’m nibbling your ear!! Ringing your ears like church bells!! A liberty bell! 🔔 Heightening your spidey senses!!!🕷️😳🩸🩸 My story just gets juicier!! 🍇 Sticky icky!! 🎄When is it juicy enough for you, I guess, is the question!! Strawberry Hill!! Cherry Blossoms!!🍒🍓We even got hills named after chocolate!!🍫 Purrthquakes instead of Earthquakes!! 😻 A Never Ending Story!! 🐺 ☁️ 🐌 ☁️ 📖 “Still in love! Still in love with that dream!! 🏔️ 🏔️ 🦌 “ Super Earth!! ⭐️ Superheroes!! ⭐️ Super pets!! ⭐️ Super foods!!⭐️ A place where everything is awesome!!🤩 A place where everyone is adorable!!🥰 I’m a sighentist!!🙄 A souldier!!😇 A Glad I Ate Hers!!😋🥧 And most of all a Roarier for the universe!!🦁 The Great Lakes represent the heart of the ocean coming together!! 🫀🌊 A huge manifestation!! 🐰 ⏰ 🍄 A microcosm of our oceans, which will someday become fresh!! 🔬 We’re sky people!! The planet our backyard!! An aquarium!! 🐠 An octopuses garden!!🪴 🐙 Dinosaurs have played the role of our bacteria!! 🦠 They’re back!!! 🦕 🦟 Hold on to your butts!!! Everything is getting supersized!!🧑🏿🍳🍟🍔🥤 When the Earth gets it two blood moons 🩸 🩸, it will represent us!!! Mostly centered around twin flames!!🥰🥰 Like we’re children of the universe!! We’ll be cells too and it will be like we’re watching each other grow and evolve!!🦥🐾🦥🐾 Our stars bursting here and there!! 💥 🎇 🎆 My cosmic perspective!! 🐼 🧪 ⚛️
@@shawnwillsey I love your channel Shawn! Sometimes you are a little too nice though. The signs are clearly inaccurate and you should just call a spade a spade.
Roughly, very roughly “At Reykjavík towards the northern end of this peninsula the relative movement of the North American Plate away from the Eurasian Plate can be modelled as 1.883 cm/year (0.741 in/year), but less than 60% of this divergence is accommodated by tectonic structures just to the immediate east of Reykjavík, with most of the rest being absorbed by tectonic structures in the south-east of Iceland.” “In southern Iceland, the block located along the plate boundary is identified as a microplate, and is named the Hreppar block or Hreppar microplate.: 53 Its current independent motion to the major plates was confirmed by GPS measurement.: 52 Internal block deformation is negligible since it has no significant evidence of active deformation, earthquakes or volcanism and a propagating rift origin from the Eastern volcanic zone (EVZ) is proposed with the Western volcanic zone (WVZ) being the receding rift.” “Hreppar Microplate - Small tectonic plate in south Iceland, between the Eurasian Plate and the North American Plate” So apparently the bridge does go “from” the NA plate, but it’s still sort of the NA side and the plate on the other side of the rift ain’t exactly the Eurasian plate anymore. Then we get into definition semantics. If you head to central Iceland the plate boundaries get wider and even more difficult to define. It’s funny how the best popular examples of the North Atlantic rift are the most difficult areas to define as such geologically. If you want to see a good rift valley with lots of exotic features travel south from Nazret to Shashemen along the Somali plate boundary. This is part of the rift zone that gave rise to so many “human”. fossil discoveries as well as a number of land locked alkaline lakes. This area is spreading apart about half a centimeter a year. “The rift floor is cut by a series of smaller en echelon, right-stepping, rift basins of Quaternary to recent age. These basins are about 20 kilometres (12 mi) wide and 60 kilometres (37 mi) long. In the northern part of the rift, extension within the valley is now thought to be mainly along these faulted and magmatically active segments.” Some ancient prophets have even been known to have found their god(s) in these high places🤣 “These segments are considered to be developing mid ocean ridge spreading centers.” And that’s the point.
As a geologist, I am not at all inclined to let them have this. I would have included what Shawn summarized about the rift zone. I am not inclined to tolerate marketing simplifications.
@@shawnwillsey You pointed out the bigger land 'bridge' that plugs the hole between the plates :) The little bridge is the disney land version :) I live near the San Andres fault in the SF Bay area, so often travel to the pacific plate.
Its an arbitrary location that was easy to get to. Icelanders are pragmatic and figured if they build a little bridge across a fissure it gives tourists something to do. No other country has it, it's uniquely Icelandic humour in action. 😉
I don't see why they can't cater to both with mindsets with a designated trail going from one end to the other of the rift graben basin. Lazy tourists get their little bridge exhibit more enterprising folks get a longer more nuanced hike to let them feel smug over the bridge only folks. ;)
@@Dragrath1 "lazy" tourists? So 15% of people are not disabled, and in NEED of accessible access, nope, just "lazy"! How revealing. Thankfully, Icelandic people aren't bigots or "nit-pickers", they want to share with all.
I like to think about it like pulling apart a Snickers bar. It just doesn't break in two pieces and slide apart. The caramel is really plastic, so it stretches, the chocolate is brittle, so it cracks in a bunch of different places on the surface, the nougat is a bit more crumbly than the caramel, so it stretches but also cracks in places. The peanuts are like really solid bodies of material, so they hold together and tend to drift intact to one side or the other. The whole thing thins out, but it's all kinda uneven. You might have a small broken out piece of chocolate on the top that gets dragged by the caramel in one direction on one side, but the other direction on the other, so it starts rotating a bit. If you let it sit, it'll all sag in the middle due to gravity.
Can't fault them for simplifying things and not trying to cater to the " actually ..." crowd . As a park ranger once remarked , about the difficulties of making bear proof garbage cans " there is considerably overlap in the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest humans " .
Years ago I visited Yosemite National Park. There were demonstration cars showing what a bear can do to your car. Don't leave tasty things in your car. Next to the demonstration car was a parked late-model van that had been destroyed the night before by one bear who ripped open one side of the van, ate the peach that had been left in the back seat, and tore open the other side door to exit. Not covered by insurance because it's a Federal crime to leave food in your car in Yosemite.
When we visited Iceland in late-August 2023, we went on a geology hike to what was Meradalir but is now a flat field of lava. During that hike, our geologist explained that plate-boundaries are very complex, and that there are hundreds of "nanoplates" between where the North American Plate ends and where the Eurasian Plate ends. And don't forget that microplate in the south of the country! So, there is no "border between the continents", but a _broad zone_ containing the complex rift between them. It's less a "bridge between continents" and more a "bridge between a continent and nanoplate-in-the-rift-zone" 😉. Our geologist guide was quite pointed about anything claiming to be a "bridge between continents" being pure marketing, not geology.
May be the hardest part of communicating scirnce: making it accessible without oversimplifying to the extent that its no longer accurate. You do a GREAT job of this. TY.
As a physical geographer and geologist I am working as a tour guide in Iceland. When I look at the tour plan for a group and see that "the bridge" is on the list of the planned stops, I even feel kind of being offended. I think it is right to name it bad and wrong to simplfy facts in odrer to take someone for a fool, just because they are tourists! My experience teached me that explaining things that are more complicated as they seem to be makes them more interesting - for both guides and tourists! By the way: the same feature and "where continents meet" (sigh!) myth is told and sold at Silfragjá at Þingvellir. Further more: if one locates the rift in that 5 km depression (Graben) at "the bridge" what is actualle happening 15 km from there to the east at Sundhnúkur, if it is not an actual rifting process? Things get even more complicated and more interesting! Thank you so much for your lesson.
Oh let them have it. It's at least over part of it. Building a 3.5 km bridge would be expensive to build, maintain, upkeep, add to and replace. Not to mention having to constantly monitor it, especially now. And they'd have to charge for it then. Imagine being on the bridge during a quake or a surprise eruption.
Man Shawn! You are a traveling man. One week in trilobite fossil fields of SW Utah, fossilized fish in SW Wyoming, scaling Devils Tower, numerous road side cuts throughout the Western US and now Iceland. Keep up the awesome work and travel safe. If I could roll back the clock 55 years, I could easily see myself as one of you disciples.
This has been a pet peeve of mine for a while. It’s all cute and all for a innocent little sign like this. But it’s more annoying when there are serious documentaries by the BBC and others that go for a dive in Silfra and proclam that they are touching both the plates at the same time. Then it stops being cute and becomes misinformation by a trusted source.
It's pretty cool that you can stand in the plate boundary zone and point out structures that have been affected by the movement of the plates. It's probably enough for most folks to experience a small part of the formation and acquire a bit of knowledge about the larger structures of the earth. It could be the spark that gets a young person interested in geology.
Thanks for the video. The mid Atlantic Ocean volcanic ridge may not have the volatility of the Pacific's ring of fire but it is just as amazing. Makes me wonder about the other visible boundaries like the Himalayas and the African Riff zone, and it's interesting that many Hawaiian terms are used to describe lava flows.
Got this Video recommended and I really liked it. Thanks for the nice little iceland trivia, very interesting. Have to get there again. Cheers, A fellow geologist
You ought to visit the Rift Valley in Kenya. The highway out of Nairobi comes to the edge of the cliff on the east side. There is a little parking lot with an overlook that has a spectacular view of the Rift Valley. There is a sign there that explains in English language the Rift Valley with a map that shows it stretching across eastern Africa from Eretria to Mozambique. The highway then descends the side of this cliff and heads across the bottom of this valley past farms and volcanic cones.
@@shawnwillsey You should visit Kenya sometime. You can describe the geology of the Rift Valley. The people are great. It is the one nation in Africa where they aren't killing each other in a local civil war. While in Nairobi they are bilingual, speaking Swahili and English, there are about 40 local languages in the rest of the country and they use English as the universal language. They drive on the left side like Australia and New Zealand. They use feet and inches for up close and personal with kilometers on the road signs, just like other Commonwealth nations. We were there in January and the temps were 70's and 80's. Difficulty for the local civil engineering, such as the new railroad being built by the Chinese and the paved highways for rubber tired vehicles, is that sometimes there is an earthquake and Rift Valley widens by a foot all at once. If you work on a road crew in Kenya you won't have to worry about being laid off and unemployed!
I was in Iceland in june-july 2009. There was another interesting demonstration of continental drift, I believe it was in Krafla, in the north-east of the country. Back in the 1960's, some geologists stuck a piece of bent rebar into the ground. The piece was bent like this "П" with both ends in the ground and then cut in the center of the top section. And then both ends drifted away from each other over the decades. But yeah, maybe that was also something for the tourists! 😅
Krafla is also part of the Mid Atlantic Ridge with a more significant hot spot and suspected continental contamination signature believed to be due to a section of Laurasia being entrained within the hotspot that drove Laurasia to break up between 60 and 58 Ma. That at least is one model for why it is thought that only the Northeastern portions of Iceland are enriched in more silica rich rhyolitic magmas based on our knowledge that the North Atlantic Large Igneous Province started as a continental flood basalt much like the CAMP(Central Atlantic Magmatic Province responsible for breaking up Pangaea of the Kerguelen island plateau Large Igneous Province responsible for the break up of Gondwana. Point is that is a section of the Mid Atlantic Ridge ridge albeit one with a more explosive siliceous history of eruptive activity which notably has a Reykjanes Peninsula like extensional episode that lasted from 1975 to 1984 so if a monitoring campaign was set p in the 1960's that would have provided some good data (though more such rebar stakes would be ideal to see how the area stretches' out.
Sounds like fun, but if the rebar was just in the ground, not the bedrock, it would be hard to distinguish any tectonic motion from frost heaving. (I live in an area where too much of the municipal budget has to go to road repairs during the non-frozen season.) 😊
I'm with you Shawn..... they should really explain it properly. But in todays "short span of attention, quick content" environment I guess people don't want long explanations when they're on holiday.
The whole island of Iceland has been built up from basaltic eruptions at the plate boundary. When you see how large Iceland is you really appreciate the scale of these processes. You also appreciate how long these processes have been ongoing, tens of millions of years.
Fantastic video. I remember Tom Scott made a similar observation in his video a few years ago titled "Swimming between two continents, debunked" where he visited Silfra and also the bridge. It's a fun place to visit and take pictures though.
I was there some weeks ago. If you drive down the road you notice a depression across the whole roadway. It is sunken down exacly in line with the rift and the bridge. I suppose the plates are actually really moving from this line.
When we were there in 1996 there was only a metal post on the main road with europe on one side and america on the other with a white line across the road.
Thank you for explaining this. Interesting. I’ve been there in 2019 when I was for the first time in Iceland on a photography trip. Now I’ve been there 3 times on photography trips. What a nice country. Greetings from the Netherlands.
The reason Iceland rises from the ocean compared to the rest of the Mid Atlantic Ridge is due the volcanic hotspot situated underneath it in the southeast. So Iceland won't split apart but rather keep on becoming elongated. 16 million years ago the east and west fjords were much closer together. Two scenarios can happen in the far flung future, either the mid atlantic tectonic rift will drift away from the hot spot some time in the far future causing the island to split apart or we will see the end of the "Wilson cycle" and the atlantic ocean will start to close again and Iceland will be crushed into the european/north american continents. Both scenarios are of course millions of years in the future.
As @E1R1KUR said the hotspot is the reason the boundary here is exposed above water if you look at the topographic maps its a giant bulge along the mid ocean ridge where the abnormally warm mantle is uplifted the material is also thicker as there are regionally more eruptions in the area but like other hotspots i.e. the Hawaiian emperor seamount chain the heavy basalt piles that result are denser than the land is still sinking into the sea as it leaves the upwelling zone where the mantle is countering the negative buoyancy. There are a few older bits of ancient Iceland which manage to stick up out of the water the most notable being the Faroe islands which are effectively a peak of the larger Eurasian side of Iceland sticking up above the waves but the bulk of the province has sunk into the North Atlantic ocean which formed 58 Ma with the initiation of the modern Icelandic hot spot splitting Greenland from Eurasia. Also as for the future of Iceland there is growing evidence seismic tomography and igneous petrology and age dating of the Siletzia and Yakutat terranes and the Yellow stone hot spot track that the Yellowstone hotspot was prior to being overridden by North America a comparable mid ocean ridge emplaced hot spot. Notably the Large Igneous Province in question is split into two major pieces today the Siletzia terrain which is along the Pacific Northwest in parts of Washington, Oregon and British Columbia that has been accreted to North America and the Yakutat terrain which is in the process of being simultaneously accreted and subducted in the Aleutian subduction zone up in Alaska as an overthickened part of the Pacific slab too thick to all subduct away. This is probably the closest direct analog of what a plate override of Iceland will eventually look like with Siletzia primarily being the Farallon half of the LIP and Yakutat the Pacific half. Its a bit more complicated since Siletzia was much hotter when it was accreted alongside the Yellowstone hotspot which formed it simultaneously cutting off the Pacific half from its magmatic source and there is also complications from the deep (solid) mantle upwelling discontinuity that is the East Pacific Rise appearing to still be active and persist beneath the North American continent with the Basin and Rage Province and Colorado plateau regions likely being the result of continued activity of this divergent boundary starting to break apart the North American Craton around 16-17 Ma. Iceland and the Mid Atlantic ridge have a similar sold mantle upwelling discontinuity but it isn't as active as the East Pacific Rise counterpart. In fact there is evidence that the rate of sea floor spreading along the Mid Atlantic Ridge is slowing down while the East Pacific Rise is speeding up which along with nascent Subduction zones spreading into the Atlantic along t he coast of Gibraltar along side the young Sandwich island arc and the Caribbean is building up the case that the Atlantic ocean is transitioning into the declining stage of its associated Wilson Cycle where subduction zones begin to form and close the ocean basin.
You described all of that as though you witnessed it all. I am impressed and humbled. Wouldn’t it be fair to be able to witness the future progression of this planet?
Hey Shawn Willsey! So If you had sensitive GPS stations on opposite ends of the bridge they wouldn't be going in different directions? Any changes would be the same unless they were further than 5 km apart? Are both plates moving compared to each other? Greetings from Vancouver British Columbia Canada! Ride ride ride!
I have been there in 2014 Thank you for explaining this. I did gather this information but I didn’t understand where the boundaries were. Awesome now you have answered a big question I have had for 10 years.
What a fab video ! Pity the Icelandic tourist board dumb down when the reality is more awesome - same with Thingvellir - but a great exploration with Shawn done in a respectful way. 5🌟
Hello Shawn, enjoying your work. Especially the roadside series. As i understand it a LIP is where hotspot meets divergent plate boundary. Is this the case in Iceland or is there offset between the two? Sould we be looking at Iceland as a large igneous province? Many thanks!
Yes and no, Iceland is a Large Igneous province or rather the largest and only still active piece of the North Atlantic Large Igneous province but not all hot spot LIP's are along divergent plate boundaries. In fact in a number of cases Iceland being one of the younger such examples second to the African rift valley complex the hot spot is largely responsible for the existence of that divergent boundary in the first place as the NALIP broke apart or was involved in the break up of Laurasia between 60 to 58 Ma.
This is great fun. What a lovely location with all the dark sand. You read my mind - I was wondering where the sand came from! How cool to see the faults and cracks in the earth so clearly. Great video - thanks so much!
“When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” The “bridge” would be a GREAT place to talk to people about the complexity of rifting zones. One topic could be the basalt deposits in South America and Africa and how that part of the Mid-Atlantic ridge once looked like Iceland does today. Or the Palisades in New Jersey, another part of the Pangea breakup.
Great info, thank you. When I first saw photos of this area, I wandered about that bridge thinking the plate boundaries must be the entire area. You're right we'll let Iceland have the bridge etc. Thanks again.
Another "Bridge Across Plates" can be found just south of the town of Parkfield CA, along the Parkfield-Coalinga Road. The bridge crosses Cholame Creek (You can see it at 35 53'42" N, 120 26' 04" W on Google Earth). As it happens the bridge runs E-W across the N-S trending creek, but the San Andreas Fault happens to cross NW-SE through the creek just as it passes under the bridge. So the town of Parkfield, self-proclaimed "Earthquake Capitol of the World," put signs on either side of the bridge informing eastbound travelers that "you are entering the North American Plate" and westbound travelers "you are entering the Pacific Plate." Same principle of course, the actual boundary is much more diffuse than a single trace of a single fault, but it's fun nonetheless. If you crawl down the embankment beneath the bridge you can see that it has been reinforced several times by adding wood beams to the structure, fastened by large bolts held by even larger nuts. Since the west edge of the structure is slowly creeping NW and the east end to the SE.
Thanks Shawn, I think would explain this feature in a similar way myself. I will get to confirm my ideas late next week when I get to check it out in person. (stopped by your office last month only to find you gone globetrotting 😆)
How about an explanation of what is going on tectonically between the tip of South America and the Antarctic Peninsular. The South Sandwich Islands seem like a pretty interesting place for a geologist.
Found the bridge on gmap had to zoom in and in. The terrain does not look like as shown on the video. Measured 5 klicks then noticed a fine dotted line which seems to be in the middle of the gap - Grindavikurber - could be an urban area. Good to know the bridge is over one of the smaller rifts. Good to see the clff edge likely above where the rock has moved down. Good explanation sketch.
In NZ, we are atop the "Ring of Fire" and the Plate boundaries of the Pacific Plate and Australian Plate that literally cuts our country in two. This boundary is exposed in a lot of places and it's not hard to find locations where you can stand astride this boundary. There are some places where you can insert a piece of paper into a crack of the boundary rock formations.
I thoroughly enjoyed this video and was in innerly amused, because, I feel great urgency and impulse to present facts, when I see distortions of reality 😅😅😅
Thank you for this, was funny to see real world contra tourist world but one thing i am wondering about is where do this “crack” belong to ? To the europa plate or to the american plate? I like that you explain all this in a easy and plain way so that us non geo ppl understand it. Best regards from Denmark
Neither. Or both. As Shawn explained, there is no one crack; it's more like a swarm of cracks fairly closely aligned with each other and the general trend of the Mid Atlantic Ridge/plate boundary.
Hi Shawn. I like your videos. Seeing how that this feature is approximately 5 KM across, I was wondering about the scuba tour where you can dive between the plates. How accurate is that? Is it about the same thing? If I get back to Iceland, I would still definitely walk across this bridge.
Thank you for your explanation, Shawn! I was told the same at another place when I visited Iceland in 2019. To be honest, I believed it at that time 😊. Now I am a little bit "wiser" - thank YOU! 🙂👍
Hey Shawn. I'm currently enjoying your Southern Idaho Geology Underfoot book. Just curious, what do you think the future holds for the other boundary of the Eurasian Plate and the North American Plate in Siberia.? Do you think they'll be a Himalayan type mountain range from the collision of the two continents? Asking for a friend.
Near the end of your video I noticed some steam rising in the distance. I was wondering if this was from the power plant at Svartsengi or if it was from the volcanic rift?
Hi Shawn. I'm a subscriber and have been following your adventures and discussions about Iceland geology for the past few months. Based on all the great info you've shared in the past, I"m a bit bummed about this short video. IMO, certainly not up to your standards. First I really don't agree that the false advertising is Ok. I'd be Ok with the location, bridge and setting IF they provided a bit more information about what this location really is. It's not a bridge between the plates since that zone is so large and it wouldn't take much in signage to explain that to tourists so they are correctly educated about what they're looking at. Misinformation hurts us all. I was hoping you'd explain more about this and actually show us the actual locations on the edges of each plate. Some drone flights would have also been helpful to show us more. You say this zone extends like 5km but are their locations in Iceland where the plates are actually closer together? And over time how are the plates actually moving relative to each other? And what makes certain areas more likely to have faults that expel lava? Just seems like a great educational spot to visit that would give you a great venue to dig in more deeply and to help explain all of this more completely. 😢
Any idea why the north and south boundaries are arcing? It looks really similar to newly forming calderas I saw at field camp in Hawaii. I don’t doubt your interpretation, I just don’t have an explanation why I’m seeing that. Thoughts?
Wondering if the five kilometer width of the rift would explain the parallel lines that we see that extend up to Keilir road turn off past the town of Vogar that mimic the ocean foam lines along wide ocean beaches? Or would they be minor parallel volcanic fissures?
When I visited the Ngong Hills, I stood on the Somali Plate and watched the sun set over the Nubian Plate to my west and north. Twilight is short on the equator and lions roam up from Nairobi National Park and the plains further east on the Somali Plate so one doesn't want to linger too long as darkness falls.
There's a spot in Iceland where you can dive and touch both plates at the same time. Silfra is the only place in the world where you can dive or snorkel directly in a crack between two tectonic plates. The earthquakes of 1789 opened up several fissures in the Thingvellir area, but the Silfra fissure cut into the underground spring filled with glacial meltwater from the nearby Langjökull glacier.
near thingvellir there is another place you can put your feet one on each side of a big crack. might as well be it, right? in reality these plates move on a scale so big that there is no human scale place we can identify that yes it's definitely spreading from right here. (unless you want to go stand over the grindavik eruption - something is happening there!)
Learned something new and special. This country is the only place on Earth where you can be on either the Eurasian or North American plate. Think of the whole of Iceland as a bunch of boats all docked at a pier and the water moves them up and down at different heights and closer and further away all at the same time.
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If the sun went super crazy, would that make some active volcanoes erupt?
Mercury Rising!!! 🌡️💕💕💕💕🤒 It’s getting hot in here!! 👙Global warming is the planet warming up to each other!! 🐨🐨
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Each thought represents a bang❗️Higher vibrational thoughts 🐝🐝🐝 will create bigger bangs‼️
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I know energy is still impurrtant!! 😻
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Who me, I’m just a worm!!🐛 🫖 Solving a labyrinth!! 🦉 Solving amaze!!! 🦋
Different energies tell a different story!! 📚
We’re storytellers!! Artists!!🧑🎨
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G Force!!!🥳👙🥳👙🥳👙🥳👙🥳
Dorothy’s Ruby red slippers!! ❤❤
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We need to get this show rolling!! 🎥
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Two Ruby red slippers!!🥿 🥿 We have to die and become reborn!! Dye!! Dye those slippers red!!😮❤❤😂
Makes complete sense!! 🤯
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Time speeds up real fast once we’re there because seeing is definitely believing!! We get excited, hearts start pumping!! 💕 Minds start to open up!! 💜 Oxytocin pumping through our blood!! A love signature!! ✍️ Removing our writers block!! We’re storytellers!! 📚
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Purrthquakes instead of Earthquakes!! 😻
A Never Ending Story!! 🐺 ☁️ 🐌 ☁️ 📖
“Still in love! Still in love with that dream!! 🏔️ 🏔️ 🦌 “
Super Earth!! ⭐️ Superheroes!! ⭐️ Super pets!! ⭐️ Super foods!!⭐️ A place where everything is awesome!!🤩 A place where everyone is adorable!!🥰
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Dinosaurs have played the role of our bacteria!! 🦠 They’re back!!! 🦕 🦟 Hold on to your butts!!! Everything is getting supersized!!🧑🏿🍳🍟🍔🥤
When the Earth gets it two blood moons 🩸 🩸, it will represent us!!! Mostly centered around twin flames!!🥰🥰
Like we’re children of the universe!! We’ll be cells too and it will be like we’re watching each other grow and evolve!!🦥🐾🦥🐾
Our stars bursting here and there!! 💥 🎇 🎆
My cosmic perspective!! 🐼 🧪 ⚛️
Thanks Shawn. Isn't there also at least one micro plate in that system?
Given it's not monetised, and it's in roughly the right spot... I'm tempted to let them have this.
Agreed. Just poking a little nit-picky fun, geology style.
@@shawnwillsey I love your channel Shawn! Sometimes you are a little too nice though. The signs are clearly inaccurate and you should just call a spade a spade.
Roughly, very roughly
“At Reykjavík towards the northern end of this peninsula the relative movement of the North American Plate away from the Eurasian Plate can be modelled as 1.883 cm/year (0.741 in/year), but less than 60% of this divergence is accommodated by tectonic structures just to the immediate east of Reykjavík, with most of the rest being absorbed by tectonic structures in the south-east of Iceland.”
“In southern Iceland, the block located along the plate boundary is identified as a microplate, and is named the Hreppar block or Hreppar microplate.: 53 Its current independent motion to the major plates was confirmed by GPS measurement.: 52 Internal block deformation is negligible since it has no significant evidence of active deformation, earthquakes or volcanism and a propagating rift origin from the Eastern volcanic zone (EVZ) is proposed with the Western volcanic zone (WVZ) being the receding rift.”
“Hreppar Microplate - Small tectonic plate in south Iceland, between the Eurasian Plate and the North American Plate”
So apparently the bridge does go “from” the NA plate, but it’s still sort of the NA side and the plate on the other side of the rift ain’t exactly the Eurasian plate anymore. Then we get into definition semantics. If you head to central Iceland the plate boundaries get wider and even more difficult to define.
It’s funny how the best popular examples of the North Atlantic rift are the most difficult areas to define as such geologically.
If you want to see a good rift valley with lots of exotic features travel south from Nazret to Shashemen along the Somali plate boundary. This is part of the rift zone that gave rise to so many “human”. fossil discoveries as well as a number of land locked alkaline lakes. This area is spreading apart about half a centimeter a year.
“The rift floor is cut by a series of smaller en echelon, right-stepping, rift basins of Quaternary to recent age. These basins are about 20 kilometres (12 mi) wide and 60 kilometres (37 mi) long. In the northern part of the rift, extension within the valley is now thought to be mainly along these faulted and magmatically active segments.”
Some ancient prophets have even been known to have found their god(s) in these high places🤣
“These segments are considered to be developing mid ocean ridge spreading centers.”
And that’s the point.
As a geologist, I am not at all inclined to let them have this. I would have included what Shawn summarized about the rift zone. I am not inclined to tolerate marketing simplifications.
@@shawnwillsey You pointed out the bigger land 'bridge' that plugs the hole between the plates :) The little bridge is the disney land version :)
I live near the San Andres fault in the SF Bay area, so often travel to the pacific plate.
Its an arbitrary location that was easy to get to. Icelanders are pragmatic and figured if they build a little bridge across a fissure it gives tourists something to do. No other country has it, it's uniquely Icelandic humour in action. 😉
I agree. It was just fun to be a little nit picky here, geology style.
I don't see why they can't cater to both with mindsets with a designated trail going from one end to the other of the rift graben basin. Lazy tourists get their little bridge exhibit more enterprising folks get a longer more nuanced hike to let them feel smug over the bridge only folks. ;)
That would be a really good idea.
@@Dragrath1 "lazy" tourists?
So 15% of people are not disabled, and in NEED of accessible access, nope, just "lazy"!
How revealing.
Thankfully, Icelandic people aren't bigots or "nit-pickers", they want to share with all.
I like to think about it like pulling apart a Snickers bar. It just doesn't break in two pieces and slide apart. The caramel is really plastic, so it stretches, the chocolate is brittle, so it cracks in a bunch of different places on the surface, the nougat is a bit more crumbly than the caramel, so it stretches but also cracks in places. The peanuts are like really solid bodies of material, so they hold together and tend to drift intact to one side or the other. The whole thing thins out, but it's all kinda uneven. You might have a small broken out piece of chocolate on the top that gets dragged by the caramel in one direction on one side, but the other direction on the other, so it starts rotating a bit. If you let it sit, it'll all sag in the middle due to gravity.
That is a good analogy it also makes you somewhat hungry. Also its funny to think of the continents being peanuts lol.
Try freezing the snickers bar first before pulling it apart.
Yes, now I am craving a Snickers! Thanks a lot.
Excellent analogy. And now I want a Snickers bar too!
@@tuboe777 yum, Snickers icecream bars. Those things are lethal good.
Can't fault them for simplifying things and not trying to cater to the " actually ..." crowd .
As a park ranger once remarked , about the difficulties of making bear proof garbage cans " there is considerably overlap in the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest humans " .
I see 👀 what you did there
😂😂🎉😂😂
Years ago I visited Yosemite National Park. There were demonstration cars showing what a bear can do to your car. Don't leave tasty things in your car. Next to the demonstration car was a parked late-model van that had been destroyed the night before by one bear who ripped open one side of the van, ate the peach that had been left in the back seat, and tore open the other side door to exit. Not covered by insurance because it's a Federal crime to leave food in your car in Yosemite.
When we visited Iceland in late-August 2023, we went on a geology hike to what was Meradalir but is now a flat field of lava. During that hike, our geologist explained that plate-boundaries are very complex, and that there are hundreds of "nanoplates" between where the North American Plate ends and where the Eurasian Plate ends. And don't forget that microplate in the south of the country! So, there is no "border between the continents", but a _broad zone_ containing the complex rift between them.
It's less a "bridge between continents" and more a "bridge between a continent and nanoplate-in-the-rift-zone" 😉.
Our geologist guide was quite pointed about anything claiming to be a "bridge between continents" being pure marketing, not geology.
May be the hardest part of communicating scirnce: making it accessible without oversimplifying to the extent that its no longer accurate. You do a GREAT job of this. TY.
As a physical geographer and geologist I am working as a tour guide in Iceland. When I look at the tour plan for a group and see that "the bridge" is on the list of the planned stops, I even feel kind of being offended. I think it is right to name it bad and wrong to simplfy facts in odrer to take someone for a fool, just because they are tourists! My experience teached me that explaining things that are more complicated as they seem to be makes them more interesting - for both guides and tourists!
By the way: the same feature and "where continents meet" (sigh!) myth is told and sold at Silfragjá at Þingvellir.
Further more: if one locates the rift in that 5 km depression (Graben) at "the bridge" what is actualle happening 15 km from there to the east at Sundhnúkur, if it is not an actual rifting process? Things get even more complicated and more interesting!
Thank you so much for your lesson.
Oh let them have it. It's at least over part of it. Building a 3.5 km bridge would be expensive to build, maintain, upkeep, add to and replace. Not to mention having to constantly monitor it, especially now. And they'd have to charge for it then. Imagine being on the bridge during a quake or a surprise eruption.
Agreed.
Man Shawn! You are a traveling man. One week in trilobite fossil fields of SW Utah, fossilized fish in SW Wyoming, scaling Devils Tower, numerous road side cuts throughout the Western US and now Iceland. Keep up the awesome work and travel safe. If I could roll back the clock 55 years, I could easily see myself as one of you disciples.
This has been a pet peeve of mine for a while. It’s all cute and all for a innocent little sign like this. But it’s more annoying when there are serious documentaries by the BBC and others that go for a dive in Silfra and proclam that they are touching both the plates at the same time. Then it stops being cute and becomes misinformation by a trusted source.
I've watched "A Bridge Too Far", now I've watched "A Bridge Too Short" lol
Good talk Shawn. That's the way I've understood it as well.
It's pretty cool that you can stand in the plate boundary zone and point out structures that have been affected by the movement of the plates. It's probably enough for most folks to experience a small part of the formation and acquire a bit of knowledge about the larger structures of the earth. It could be the spark that gets a young person interested in geology.
Nice weather! When I was there it was raining sideways. We crossed the bridge anyway. 😊
Same for me, pouring and super windy. This was a nice follow-up. We crossed the bridge and ran back to the car.
Ha! We were delayed one day which would have been in exactly that type of weather.
@@shawnwillsey I'll be back in Iceland in a week or so, my 3rd time. Hope I see the volcano. Going up to Snaefellenes, too.
That was fun and instructional. Thank you Shawn. 😊
"Not exactly." - Loved the update. It's like your road cut series. Iceland looks amazing. Thanks Shawn!
I visited Thingvellir National Park last year, which I gather is also on the plate boundary…yes?
Yes, just further inland.
Þingvellir is on the boundary of the North American plate and the Hreppafleki micro-plate. The Eurasian plate is quite a bit far away to the east.
Thanks for the video. The mid Atlantic Ocean volcanic ridge may not have the volatility of the Pacific's ring of fire but it is just as amazing. Makes me wonder about the other visible boundaries like the Himalayas and the African Riff zone, and it's interesting that many Hawaiian terms are used to describe lava flows.
Got this Video recommended and I really liked it. Thanks for the nice little iceland trivia, very interesting. Have to get there again.
Cheers,
A fellow geologist
You ought to visit the Rift Valley in Kenya. The highway out of Nairobi comes to the edge of the cliff on the east side. There is a little parking lot with an overlook that has a spectacular view of the Rift Valley. There is a sign there that explains in English language the Rift Valley with a map that shows it stretching across eastern Africa from Eretria to Mozambique. The highway then descends the side of this cliff and heads across the bottom of this valley past farms and volcanic cones.
I would LOVE to see this someday.
@@shawnwillsey You should visit Kenya sometime. You can describe the geology of the Rift Valley. The people are great. It is the one nation in Africa where they aren't killing each other in a local civil war. While in Nairobi they are bilingual, speaking Swahili and English, there are about 40 local languages in the rest of the country and they use English as the universal language. They drive on the left side like Australia and New Zealand. They use feet and inches for up close and personal with kilometers on the road signs, just like other Commonwealth nations. We were there in January and the temps were 70's and 80's. Difficulty for the local civil engineering, such as the new railroad being built by the Chinese and the paved highways for rubber tired vehicles, is that sometimes there is an earthquake and Rift Valley widens by a foot all at once. If you work on a road crew in Kenya you won't have to worry about being laid off and unemployed!
Thank you very much Shawn. Very Interesting.
I was in Iceland in june-july 2009. There was another interesting demonstration of continental drift, I believe it was in Krafla, in the north-east of the country.
Back in the 1960's, some geologists stuck a piece of bent rebar into the ground. The piece was bent like this "П" with both ends in the ground and then cut in the center of the top section.
And then both ends drifted away from each other over the decades.
But yeah, maybe that was also something for the tourists! 😅
Krafla is also part of the Mid Atlantic Ridge with a more significant hot spot and suspected continental contamination signature believed to be due to a section of Laurasia being entrained within the hotspot that drove Laurasia to break up between 60 and 58 Ma. That at least is one model for why it is thought that only the Northeastern portions of Iceland are enriched in more silica rich rhyolitic magmas based on our knowledge that the North Atlantic Large Igneous Province started as a continental flood basalt much like the CAMP(Central Atlantic Magmatic Province responsible for breaking up Pangaea of the Kerguelen island plateau Large Igneous Province responsible for the break up of Gondwana.
Point is that is a section of the Mid Atlantic Ridge ridge albeit one with a more explosive siliceous history of eruptive activity which notably has a Reykjanes Peninsula like extensional episode that lasted from 1975 to 1984 so if a monitoring campaign was set p in the 1960's that would have provided some good data (though more such rebar stakes would be ideal to see how the area stretches' out.
Sounds like fun, but if the rebar was just in the ground, not the bedrock, it would be hard to distinguish any tectonic motion from frost heaving. (I live in an area where too much of the municipal budget has to go to road repairs during the non-frozen season.) 😊
@@b.a.erlebacher1139i suspect for many areas of iceland the ground is the bedrock
I'm with you Shawn..... they should really explain it properly. But in todays "short span of attention, quick content" environment I guess people don't want long explanations when they're on holiday.
The whole island of Iceland has been built up from basaltic eruptions at the plate boundary. When you see how large Iceland is you really appreciate the scale of these processes. You also appreciate how long these processes have been ongoing, tens of millions of years.
Fantastic video. I remember Tom Scott made a similar observation in his video a few years ago titled "Swimming between two continents, debunked" where he visited Silfra and also the bridge. It's a fun place to visit and take pictures though.
I was there some weeks ago. If you drive down the road you notice a depression across the whole roadway. It is sunken down exacly in line with the rift and the bridge. I suppose the plates are actually really moving from this line.
Between your channel and Ozgeographics, I've learned so much. Thank you.
Good to hear you telling it as it is, Shawn!
When we were there in 1996 there was only a metal post on the main road with europe on one side and america on the other with a white line across the road.
But it's still fun to stand on the bridge and in the fissure and tell your friends that you're standing between the tectonic plates!
Stałam,czułam moc oraz że już jestem w USA,a,ja z Polski,gdy nawet wiz nam odmawiali.
For sure.
@@Alicja009 Hey, you were in Canada and Mexico and a bit of Siberia and even part of northern Japan, too!
Visited this bridge in 2021 and found it fairly ridiculous. But at least they don't charge admission, so it's hardly the worst tourist trap I've seen.
Thank you for explaining this. Interesting. I’ve been there in 2019 when I was for the first time in Iceland on a photography trip. Now I’ve been there 3 times on photography trips. What a nice country. Greetings from the Netherlands.
Thank you Shawn for a great explanation. I’ve been there and found the whole experience fascinating and now, even more so.
Very well explained 😃👌 Thank you 🙏
Thank you, Shawn!
Very Interesting!!!
So cool Shawn! Thanks for sharing
Very cool. Thanks for bringing us along.
That was cool! The amt of basalt showing through is very amazing. As time goes on, will the land split in two and form a pair of matching islands?
The reason Iceland rises from the ocean compared to the rest of the Mid Atlantic Ridge is due the volcanic hotspot situated underneath it in the southeast. So Iceland won't split apart but rather keep on becoming elongated. 16 million years ago the east and west fjords were much closer together. Two scenarios can happen in the far flung future, either the mid atlantic tectonic rift will drift away from the hot spot some time in the far future causing the island to split apart or we will see the end of the "Wilson cycle" and the atlantic ocean will start to close again and Iceland will be crushed into the european/north american continents. Both scenarios are of course millions of years in the future.
As @E1R1KUR said the hotspot is the reason the boundary here is exposed above water if you look at the topographic maps its a giant bulge along the mid ocean ridge where the abnormally warm mantle is uplifted the material is also thicker as there are regionally more eruptions in the area but like other hotspots i.e. the Hawaiian emperor seamount chain the heavy basalt piles that result are denser than the land is still sinking into the sea as it leaves the upwelling zone where the mantle is countering the negative buoyancy. There are a few older bits of ancient Iceland which manage to stick up out of the water the most notable being the Faroe islands which are effectively a peak of the larger Eurasian side of Iceland sticking up above the waves but the bulk of the province has sunk into the North Atlantic ocean which formed 58 Ma with the initiation of the modern Icelandic hot spot splitting Greenland from Eurasia.
Also as for the future of Iceland there is growing evidence seismic tomography and igneous petrology and age dating of the Siletzia and Yakutat terranes and the Yellow stone hot spot track that the Yellowstone hotspot was prior to being overridden by North America a comparable mid ocean ridge emplaced hot spot. Notably the Large Igneous Province in question is split into two major pieces today the Siletzia terrain which is along the Pacific Northwest in parts of Washington, Oregon and British Columbia that has been accreted to North America and the Yakutat terrain which is in the process of being simultaneously accreted and subducted in the Aleutian subduction zone up in Alaska as an overthickened part of the Pacific slab too thick to all subduct away.
This is probably the closest direct analog of what a plate override of Iceland will eventually look like with Siletzia primarily being the Farallon half of the LIP and Yakutat the Pacific half. Its a bit more complicated since Siletzia was much hotter when it was accreted alongside the Yellowstone hotspot which formed it simultaneously cutting off the Pacific half from its magmatic source and there is also complications from the deep (solid) mantle upwelling discontinuity that is the East Pacific Rise appearing to still be active and persist beneath the North American continent with the Basin and Rage Province and Colorado plateau regions likely being the result of continued activity of this divergent boundary starting to break apart the North American Craton around 16-17 Ma.
Iceland and the Mid Atlantic ridge have a similar sold mantle upwelling discontinuity but it isn't as active as the East Pacific Rise counterpart.
In fact there is evidence that the rate of sea floor spreading along the Mid Atlantic Ridge is slowing down while the East Pacific Rise is speeding up which along with nascent Subduction zones spreading into the Atlantic along t he coast of Gibraltar along side the young Sandwich island arc and the Caribbean is building up the case that the Atlantic ocean is transitioning into the declining stage of its associated Wilson Cycle where subduction zones begin to form and close the ocean basin.
You described all of that as though you witnessed it all. I am impressed and humbled. Wouldn’t it be fair to be able to witness the future progression of this planet?
@@Dragrath1 Thank you! I do have grounding (thanks to Professor Zentner) on Siletzia etc. Very much appreciated. Have a better visual in my head now.
Hey Shawn Willsey! So If you had sensitive GPS stations on opposite ends of the bridge they wouldn't be going in different directions? Any changes would be the same unless they were further than 5 km apart? Are both plates moving compared to each other? Greetings from Vancouver British Columbia Canada! Ride ride ride!
Thanks for the fascinating lesson. We are cruising to Iceland next month and I feel well prepared thanks to you.
Excellent geo-adventure. Thx Prof ✌🏻
I have been there in 2014 Thank you for explaining this. I did gather this information but I didn’t understand where the boundaries were. Awesome now you have answered a big question I have had for 10 years.
Thank you, Shawn! Funny and educational: the perfect combo! ;)
Personally I like the acres of black sand!
One more place on Earth that I feel like I've been there, without really going there. Thanks Shawn.
What a fab video ! Pity the Icelandic tourist board dumb down when the reality is more awesome - same with Thingvellir - but a great exploration with Shawn done in a respectful way. 5🌟
Hello Shawn, enjoying your work. Especially the roadside series. As i understand it a LIP is where hotspot meets divergent plate boundary. Is this the case in Iceland or is there offset between the two? Sould we be looking at Iceland as a large igneous province? Many thanks!
Yes and no, Iceland is a Large Igneous province or rather the largest and only still active piece of the North Atlantic Large Igneous province but not all hot spot LIP's are along divergent plate boundaries. In fact in a number of cases Iceland being one of the younger such examples second to the African rift valley complex the hot spot is largely responsible for the existence of that divergent boundary in the first place as the NALIP broke apart or was involved in the break up of Laurasia between 60 to 58 Ma.
@@Dragrath1 Thank you Dragrath, it seems obvious now that you've pointed it out.
This is great fun. What a lovely location with all the dark sand. You read my mind - I was wondering where the sand came from! How cool to see the faults and cracks in the earth so clearly. Great video - thanks so much!
“When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” The “bridge” would be a GREAT place to talk to people about the complexity of rifting zones. One topic could be the basalt deposits in South America and Africa and how that part of the Mid-Atlantic ridge once looked like Iceland does today. Or the Palisades in New Jersey, another part of the Pangea breakup.
Great info, thank you. When I first saw photos of this area, I wandered about that bridge thinking the plate boundaries must be the entire area. You're right we'll let Iceland have the bridge etc. Thanks again.
It’s stunningly beautiful there. What an office space. Very cool video.
Great job! Thank you very much!
Another "Bridge Across Plates" can be found just south of the town of Parkfield CA, along the Parkfield-Coalinga Road. The bridge crosses Cholame Creek (You can see it at 35 53'42" N, 120 26' 04" W on Google Earth). As it happens the bridge runs E-W across the N-S trending creek, but the San Andreas Fault happens to cross NW-SE through the creek just as it passes under the bridge.
So the town of Parkfield, self-proclaimed "Earthquake Capitol of the World," put signs on either side of the bridge informing eastbound travelers that "you are entering the North American Plate" and westbound travelers "you are entering the Pacific Plate." Same principle of course, the actual boundary is much more diffuse than a single trace of a single fault, but it's fun nonetheless.
If you crawl down the embankment beneath the bridge you can see that it has been reinforced several times by adding wood beams to the structure, fastened by large bolts held by even larger nuts. Since the west edge of the structure is slowly creeping NW and the east end to the SE.
Nice video, great to see that landscape
Thank you so much for that rational explanation
Looking forward to this 😁 thanks Shawn
Worthy description. Thanks.
Thanks Shawn, I think would explain this feature in a similar way myself. I will get to confirm my ideas late next week when I get to check it out in person. (stopped by your office last month only to find you gone globetrotting 😆)
How about an explanation of what is going on tectonically between the tip of South America and the Antarctic Peninsular.
The South Sandwich Islands seem like a pretty interesting place for a geologist.
Thank you Shawn 😊 fascinating lesson 😊
Are there other locations along the Mid Atlantic Ridge in Iceland where the rift is narrower than the 5km location you showed us here?
Found the bridge on gmap had to zoom in and in. The terrain does not look like as shown on the video. Measured 5 klicks then noticed a fine dotted line which seems to be in the middle of the gap - Grindavikurber - could be an urban area.
Good to know the bridge is over one of the smaller rifts. Good to see the clff edge likely above where the rock has moved down.
Good explanation sketch.
Reminds me of the Continental Divide sign our tour group stood in front of in the Canadian Rockies. Those are amazing mountains!
Thank you Shawn🌎
Super interesting and so nicely explained. Really enjoyed this.
Close enough for me thank you ALL stay safe
Very interesting video, and it is much appreciated. Where does the tourist trail lead?
In NZ, we are atop the "Ring of Fire" and the Plate boundaries of the Pacific Plate and Australian Plate that literally cuts our country in two. This boundary is exposed in a lot of places and it's not hard to find locations where you can stand astride this boundary. There are some places where you can insert a piece of paper into a crack of the boundary rock formations.
I thoroughly enjoyed this video and was in innerly amused, because, I feel great urgency and impulse to present facts, when I see distortions of reality 😅😅😅
Thank you for this, was funny to see real world contra tourist world but one thing i am wondering about is where do this “crack” belong to ? To the europa plate or to the american plate? I like that you explain all this in a easy and plain way so that us non geo ppl understand it. Best regards from Denmark
Neither. Or both. As Shawn explained, there is no one crack; it's more like a swarm of cracks fairly closely aligned with each other and the general trend of the Mid Atlantic Ridge/plate boundary.
@@richarddavies7419 thak you for this, make sens sins it is part of the mid atlantic ridge
But Professor, you didn't walk the whole three miles for us!
Thanks Shawn. Fascinating!
Hi Shawn. I like your videos. Seeing how that this feature is approximately 5 KM across, I was wondering about the scuba tour where you can dive between the plates. How accurate is that? Is it about the same thing? If I get back to Iceland, I would still definitely walk across this bridge.
Thank you for your explanation, Shawn! I was told the same at another place when I visited Iceland in 2019. To be honest, I believed it at that time 😊. Now I am a little bit "wiser" - thank YOU! 🙂👍
Hey Shawn. I'm currently enjoying your Southern Idaho Geology Underfoot book. Just curious, what do you think the future holds for the other boundary of the Eurasian Plate and the North American Plate in Siberia.? Do you think they'll be a Himalayan type mountain range from the collision of the two continents? Asking for a friend.
Awesome. Thanks for getting book.
Thanks for that clear summary. Bit disappointed you didn't just shin up that escarpment and really get onto the Eurasian plate ;)
Tight schedule on this day. Normally I would.
@@shawnwillsey You actually mean that don't you lol
Near the end of your video I noticed some steam rising in the distance. I was wondering if this was from the power plant at Svartsengi or if it was from the volcanic rift?
Different power plant near tip of peninsula
@@shawnwillsey Aha, OK.
I've been to this spot in Iceland--YES, it really IS that simple! To continent plates that meet .
Thank you professor! I've always wondered about that spot.
That was interesting, thanks for posting.
Hi Shawn. I'm a subscriber and have been following your adventures and discussions about Iceland geology for the past few months. Based on all the great info you've shared in the past, I"m a bit bummed about this short video. IMO, certainly not up to your standards.
First I really don't agree that the false advertising is Ok. I'd be Ok with the location, bridge and setting IF they provided a bit more information about what this location really is. It's not a bridge between the plates since that zone is so large and it wouldn't take much in signage to explain that to tourists so they are correctly educated about what they're looking at. Misinformation hurts us all.
I was hoping you'd explain more about this and actually show us the actual locations on the edges of each plate. Some drone flights would have also been helpful to show us more. You say this zone extends like 5km but are their locations in Iceland where the plates are actually closer together? And over time how are the plates actually moving relative to each other? And what makes certain areas more likely to have faults that expel lava? Just seems like a great educational spot to visit that would give you a great venue to dig in more deeply and to help explain all of this more completely. 😢
I imagine the same is true of the Silfra Fissure which is also touted as the exact rift between the plates.
Indeed. The whole valley where Thingvellir lies is the boundary there.
I haven’t seen this particular sight but I do remember seeing the American plate (?) at Thingvellir & I took a pic. All so interesting.
Tension fracture! Makes so much common sense.
Thank you Professor
That was really cool, thanks.
Any idea why the north and south boundaries are arcing? It looks really similar to newly forming calderas I saw at field camp in Hawaii. I don’t doubt your interpretation, I just don’t have an explanation why I’m seeing that. Thoughts?
Wondering if the five kilometer width of the rift would explain the parallel lines that we see that extend up to Keilir road turn off past the town of Vogar that mimic the ocean foam lines along wide ocean beaches? Or would they be minor parallel volcanic fissures?
How about on the San Andreas as it goes thru the SF area. Is the boundary more narrow? Say on Greer Rd in Woodside?
Good detail. Just add to the NA pl;ate, "Facing North America."
When I visited the Ngong Hills, I stood on the Somali Plate and watched the sun set over the Nubian Plate to my west and north. Twilight is short on the equator and lions roam up from Nairobi National Park and the plains further east on the Somali Plate so one doesn't want to linger too long as darkness falls.
There's a spot in Iceland where you can dive and touch both plates at the same time.
Silfra is the only place in the world where you can dive or snorkel directly in a crack between two tectonic plates. The earthquakes of 1789 opened up several fissures in the Thingvellir area, but the Silfra fissure cut into the underground spring filled with glacial meltwater from the nearby Langjökull glacier.
Sorry to break it to you but the Silfra fracture is just like this one. It’s in the plate boundary zone but not THE boundary.
Fascinating. I hear the icelandic tourist authority would like to have a word...
near thingvellir there is another place you can put your feet one on each side of a big crack. might as well be it, right? in reality these plates move on a scale so big that there is no human scale place we can identify that yes it's definitely spreading from right here. (unless you want to go stand over the grindavik eruption - something is happening there!)
Learned something new and special. This country is the only place on Earth where you can be on either the Eurasian or
North American plate. Think of the whole of Iceland as a bunch of boats all docked at a pier and the water moves them
up and down at different heights and closer and further away all at the same time.
So how long can that bridge last. The ground is dropping as the plate boundary expands? Is also moving laterally?
An additional sign there to explain what you did would be good.
Wow. Thank you
Our Earth is so fascinating!