Giants causeway, matter of time or matters of facts?

Question

The giants causeway is a rare wonder

People say it took millions of years of natural erosion of basalt rock and the general cooling of volcanoic lava

The rock formations are helixical and parallel and dead vertical in places


what do you guys think, is this the hand of man, or even giant men as the name would suggest or do you think it's the result of millions of years

well this is my answer, the rocks are made of repeating units, almost brickwork in natrue, areas show sheer vertical flat and parallel layers, if this is due to millions of years then so was mount rushmore.

The question is, if it did not take millions of years, then who built it?

follow the url and come back to me with your thoguhts:

http://www.answers.com/topic/giants-causeway-organ-jpg

lets see what peoples views are

Brian all over ireland they are found

But do they look natural or artificial,
what they claim too millions of years looks to be man made, so if it is which men made it,

look atthe repeating units, does it look like the handiwork of nature,

the question is, which civilisation of men made it, they clearly were not millions of years old

so what is it the geologists aren't telling you that you can see with your own eyes....

that's why i posted the question, so you can judge with your eyes what science is saying took millions of years, looks like a brick wall made by man,


which civilisation built it, and clearly they weren't living in caves or wondering how to start a fire?

Secret:

Thats helpful with regards to how possible formatrions could have resulted,

but i can't get round 2 problems

1: giving the subsequent mnumber of volcanoic reactions why is this feature just unique to ireland and why has it never been repeated or happend by any other volcanoic reaction ever since or even before

2. Ireland has no volcanoes whatsoever

it's on a tectonic plate so it has to drift with that plate and its location is nowhere near a volcanoic zone,

given millions of years it drifted on the plate the volcanoic zones would have been on the edges of the plate it drifted on, ireland didn't drift within the plate, it drifted with the plate,
so how did the resulting volcanoic basalt rock
drift from the edge towards the centre of its tectonic plate?

if this happened then there would be more causeways on the edges of ireland,

loads more causeways would concur but there aren't

Secrets: Thanks for relaying all the other similar worldly formations

But you got to admit they look freakishly geometrical don't they, and occur in places where there are no volcanoes but geologists claim they are made of volcanoic rock

interesting none the less!

cheers

Answer 1

I have been to the Giant's Causeway (my father is from N. Ireland) and it is amazing.

The geological explanation of the hexagonal (not helixical) columns themselves is NOT that they took millions of years to form. Instead, the columns themselves were almost instantaneous ... the result of a rapid cooling of basalt lava as it extruded through chalk. The molten basalt contracted and cracked in the hexagonal pattern that went deep into the basalt bed.

The erosion that *exposed* the columns took millions of years, but not the columns themselves.

It is not a man-made formation.

The same volcanic formation can be seen in many other locations in the world ... Scotland, Armenia, California (Devil's Postpile), Wyoming (Devil's Tower), Mexico, Vietnam, New Zealand, and other places. The Giant's Causeway just happens to be one of the most famous because it is so spectacular.

{P.S.}

For people wondering what we're talking about, see the attached wikipedia page with photographs. The formation is also featured in the famous cover for Led Zeppelin's album 'Houses of the Holy'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LedZeppelinHousesOfTheHolycover.jpg

Answer 2

Straight lines are frequent in nature. I can't understand why so many people think they are rare. Ever grown crystals? Perfectly straight edges. A salt crystal under the right conditions will grow to be a perfect cube.

As to volcanic rock and tectonic plate drifting, volcanic activity creates material at the edge of the plate which is then carried inwards as the plate drifts. You'll notice that the Earth isn't full of gaping holes where plates are dirfting apart. Where collisions of plates occur subduction pushes one below the other and re-melts it into the mantle. It is perfectly possible to have volcanic rock nowhere near a volcanic zone by this process. most of the hawaiian islands are nowhere near the volcanic zone that spawned them, but they are undoubtedly volcanic.

Bottom line: The Giant's Causeway is not man-made, but it is a superb example of the beauty and regularity of natural mineral formations on this planet.

Answer 3

I don't know anything about the Giants causeway, so I can't comment on it.

I'd trust the geologists on this.

There are similar basalt-in-chalk formations elsewhere in Ireland.

Answer 4

Hexagonal columns are at Devil's Tower, too, in Wyoming.

Answer 5

Repeating patterns, especially hexagonal 'tiling`
are not uncommon in natural geology.
(It has been seen in freeze/thaw patterns in the arctic tundra eg.)
There need not have been giants.