A satellite image of Upheaval Dome in Canyonlands National Park, Utah, taken in 2016. (Image Credit: USGS/NASA Landsat data/Orbital Horizon/Gallo Images/Getty Images)
Upheaval Dome is a geological formation in Utah that features jagged peaks carved into concentric rings. Astronauts on the International Space Station captured images of the structure in 2007, leading to analogies between the giant dome and the human belly button.
Upheaval Dome is 3 miles (5 kilometers) wide and 1,000 feet (300 meters) high. Its origins remain a matter of debate, but the presence of impacted quartz crystals suggests that the dome was formed by a meteorite impact on Earth 60 million years ago.
Geologists speculate that the meteorite impact initially created a bowl-shaped depression in the earth, and that the edges of this depression became unstable and eventually collapsed. The underlying layers may then have risen to fill the void and form the ridge structure we see today.
Not everyone agrees with this interpretation, however. Some scientists believe that Upheaval Dome was created by the upwelling of salt beneath the sandstone layers of southeastern Utah.
Beneath Canyonlands National Park is a thick layer of salt formed from ancient closed seas. The salt, being relatively light, can move within the rock, much like ice can move beneath a glacier, according to the National Park Service (NPS).
According to the National Park Service, salt is also less dense than sandstone, allowing it to form a huge “bubble” that, as it rose, pushed the rocks apart.
A photograph taken from the edge of the Upheaval dome shows how erosion has destroyed the central part of the formation.
Although Upheaval Dome is unlikely to be a sandstone-covered salt bubble, as erosion likely removed several layers of the structure over long periods of time. Instead, the center of the dome is thought to be a rocky base that formed beneath the salt bubble as rocks fell into cracks around the edges of the bubble. These rocks may have rolled down the sides of the bubble and accumulated beneath the salt, forming the rocky structure we see today.
If the salt bubble hypothesis is correct, Upheaval Dome would be the most deeply eroded salt structure on the planet.
However, the discovery of shocked quartz crystals is the latest published research into the origins of Upheaval Dome. It is unclear whether research is ongoing to
Sourse: www.livescience.com
