There may be no other plot of ground so often used to illustrate many of the geologic processes espoused in textbooks than the Grand Canyon. Geologist talk about it like they have the processes all figured out. Is it just possible that they have gotten it all wrong? This presentation is going to suggest unimaginable cratering was responsible for everything we see there, from the rocks, the sequence, the faults, and the actual canyon. None of it got there by geological processes we can see happening around us today. We will question if some of the processes even work the way everyone has assumed they worked. Gentle reader, do not be afraid to questions the rocks, the processes, even my model, but above all, question the assumptions both you and I have made. Our God is a God of mystery, but He is also a God of Knowing. And in knowing, He is worthy of our praise.
In the previous two parts I have covered a little of how I arrived at my model of crater formation, and the cratering events that shaped some of the strata exposed in the canyon. Now we want to understand the cratering events that led to the formation of the canyon.
Figure 60: Redwall Cavern, a prominent landmark on the river trips is a great place to deal with the ubiquitous red color that coats much of the inner gorge. Many just say that it is Iron Oxide, but do not specify the type. Iron (Fe) has three oxidations states and forms three oxides: rust that requires water in its molecule, magnetite that is black, and hematite that is red. To form hematite requires removing three electrons from the Fe ion, which requires almost twice the energy of removing only 2 electrons (Chapter 12.). If it were rust it would keep forming and flaking off, like rust does on a piece of iron. It did not come from the Supai above that washed down as the rangers try to tell you, because it covered the ceiling of Redwall Cavern, and it could not have washed onto the ceiling all the way to the back of the cavern. Also, the hematite in the Supai Sandstone is trapped as crystals between the grains of silica sand. The black you can see on some of the far wall is not “dirt,” but chemist have identified it as oxides of magnesium, and tungsten, and it requires high temperatures to form also. All of these oxides require very high temperatures, ~1,000 degrees C (1,832 degrees F), to form. Note, the Cavern formed at the same time as the rest of the canyon and all of the other alcoves into the Redwall, which are also covered with hematite.
Figure 61: It was Aristotle who recognized that streams move material, and Seneca recognized the power of streams to wear away valleys. Leonardo da Vinci believed that valleys were a result of their streams, but Unaweep and Grand Valleys of Colorado and the Grand Canyon are extreme examples of under-fit streams. The water flowing through them could never start to produce the vast amount of erosion that has taken place there. In the Grand Canyon it is made even worse. It is not one channel, but, a maze of side channels covering about 2,000 sq. miles (5,200 sq. km.). I have classified the Unaweep and Grand Valleys as Release Valleys (Chapter 1) from the Unaweep crater. Could the Grand Canyon have the same origin??
Figure 62: Let’s start with one small but pronounced feature of the erosion, the Butte Fault. It is up to the east, telling us the shear center is to the west. The west side it thrusting up-and-over the east side. Comparing this in a diagram of the expected cratering faults, the only expected movement of earth in a cratering event would be thrust movement, reverse faults, outwards in all directions as a result of shock compression at the impact site. The formation of Normal Compensation faults would be expected as the compression drops down into the Release Valley at the adiabatic conversion site on the inside of the compression wave. Faults are not a matter of plate growth/extension or contraction/foreshortening. Horst and Graben systems and Transverse Faults do not exist (Chapter 19A). There are several things in geology that will have to be relearned, and faults are one of them.
Figure 63: The Bright Angel-Phantom Creek-Eminence Break Fault is a second continuous linear that Huntoon and Sears first recognized in 1975. It is first seen at the Bright Angel trailhead, and forms the canyon to the river. From there the linear continues following the Phantom Creek canyon out over the North Rim where it corresponds with the Eminence Break on the north eastern edge of the rim. Do linears appear at random (Chapters 3-7)? Or, can their source of shear be traced back to the supposed direction of plate convergence?? Over vast reaches of the Pacific Northwest multiple authors have traced the Euler Pole for several sets of faults. They assume the Euler Pole is a pole of plate rotation, but I find their location of the pole corresponds with my location of cratering centers (Chapter 19). We are finding the same thing, and identifying it according to our different models.
Figure 64: (A) One map of Butte Fault that may have been taken from an old map or estimated from the terrane. I highlighted their designation of Butte Fault as two linears using corresponding labels to Figure 66. (B) Linears I located in the area using topographic clues, CGRS in white and short concentric linears shown in red. Labels as in Figure 65.
Figure 65: Craters found to correlate with linears around (A) Butte Fault and (B) Bright Angel-Phantom Creek-Eminence Break Fault. Butte Fault is up to east and Davidson, Molokai, and Salsipuedes craters all center in the Pacific Ocean. Red oval encircles a topographic high parallel to Ipojuca linear (Chapter 15A). The Ipojuca linear extends through Nankoweep Butte, Figure 62B. Ipojuca center is in the southern Atlantic Ocean. Huntoon and Sears identified the Bright Angel Fault as a normal fault (compensation fault) with west side up, meaning its center is to the southeast. I correlate it with the Gulf of Mexico crater. Additionally, they identify it as faulting between the deposition of the Unkar and Chuar Groups. This means that the Gulf of Mexico crater arrived between the Tatanka and Gorda craters. But in fact, the Gulf of Mexico is east of the Tatanka and would arrive first, but its CGRS may not have arrived here until after the Tatanka’s CGRS. This type of associations allow sequence and timing to be established for craters outside of the Grand Canyon.
Figure 66: Top of the Crystalline Basement under the Grand Canyon and some of the earliest mapped faults (Precambrian). Butte Fault designated in blue as separate linears: (A) CGRS from Molokai crater, (B) CGRS from Salsipuedes crater, (C) CGRS again from Molokai crater, (D) CGRS again from Salsipuedes crater, and (E) CGRS from Ipojuca crater. Bright Angel-Phantom Creek-Eminence Break Fault designated in red. Two portions of the more southerly Mesa Butte Fault also appear to correspond with CGRS from the Gulf of Mexico crater. Faults are often made up of segments from different shear centers that have become associated in the mind of the geologist because they seem to form a continuous line on the ground. This reflects the observation in the Paradox Basin, made by Gay (2012) that faults and other structures exhibit “straight line segments with corners” where they meet other segments. They are largely not one continuous linear.
Figure 67: What do the Sevier Orogeny and the Alvord crater have to do with what we can now see in the Grand Canyon? Remember the Gravity Map of the farside of the moon? The distinct bull’s-eye appearance of high and low, red and blue, gravity? If cratering did this to the moon, it also did this to the earth. In spite of all the later cratering, we can see that the Grand Canyon (red oval) lays in a broad blue band that extends well beyond the canyon. If it is dark blue, it was filled with a less dense version of the rock. As I have suggested the Alvord crater deposited the Chuar Formation, so that formation in this area is less dense than the alternative. If that formation is less dense, it will be preferentially eroded by the adiabatic conversion forming release valleys in subsequent cratering. What are some of these larger subsequent craters, and what did they each contribute???
Figure 68: When evaluating what each crater contributed, we have to recognize how the dark blue rings conform to the white rings of that crater. I have already emphasized how the Alvord and Blowout Mountain have a similar foot print and how they both contributed to the Sevier Orogeny. In the Grand Canyon area, the Blowout Mountain produced a couple of additional small up-thrust. I suggest that these up-thrust were smaller because they were working against the low gravity left in the area by the Alvord. The blue ring of the Winnemucca crater extends well beyond both ends of the Grand Canyon’s area. Again the dark blue seems to hug the white rings, strongly indicating that it is a low gravity ring of the Winnemucca crater. The white ring just beyond the canyon did thrust up some mountain ridges, so it would be a compression wave, and the canyon just behind it would be part of the associated release valley. The general line of the canyon appears to mimic the curve of the Winnemucca’s rings.
Figure 69: The Chilili and Gandy craters have one very important aspect in common, both of them include the Grand Canyon within their original crater rim. We saw on the moon’s highlands, the continent of the moon, all of the craters, except the mascons in the largest, have blue centers. The fallback into the crater leaves a less dense lithology. On the Chilili crater the third ring displaced the mountain ridge down Baja California. A larger view would show that slight arc certainly originally aligned with California’s Sierra Nevada, further to the east. The original crater ring on the Gandy crater is outside the edges of the image.
Figure 70: While the Grand crater included the Grand Canyon within its original crater rings, both the Grand and Navajo craters also contributed to the release valley the Colorado River flows through in the Canyon. With the Grand crater the white arrows point to sections of the river channel that follows the rings. The Yellow arrows indicate other locations that it contributed to the gravity pattern, but the river does not follow it. The river channel southwest of both Kaibab Plateau (K) and Shivwits Plateau (S) are release valleys from Grand crater, while the raised plateaus themselves were produced by the Navajo crater. The inner ring of the Navajo crater is especially easy to see (red arrow) as it is a ridge of high gravity making almost a half-circle. Walhalla Plateau on the southeast pointed end of Kaibab Plateau. It is a nearly isolated plateau surrounded by steep slopes to the Colorado River. I propose it remained a plateau because it was harder, denser because of the added energy put into it by the Navajo crater. Its added density may not reflect different mineral content, but only denser, more tightly packed particle matrix.
Figure 71: The Alaskan crater produced a CGRS just southeast of the white arc that highlights the release-wave response on its backside, The CGRS is accentuated by a second arced linear to the northwest. The red line indicates the shock/compression ridge and the dark blue linear behind it was produced by the following release/expansion wave. The Aguj de Anahuac crater being a smaller crater than the Alaskan, I assume arrived a couple days later. It left a CGRS in a very similar location, but I think the exact location of its release valley better corresponds to the low gravity area connecting the Kaibab and Shivwits Plateaus. A careful examination will show the low gravity linear that makes this central portion of the canyon also had an expression on both the Kaibab and Shivwits Plateaus forming small valleys in its paths across them. This expression on the plateaus is not a feature of the Alaskan craters linear. The Alaskan CGRS probably arrived earlier about the time of the Chuar or Tapeats, while Aguj de Anahuac arrived about the time of the Redwall or Kaibab and left a release valley much higher in the strata.
Figure 72: Now that we have accounted for some of the sedimentary layers from cratering, how did the canyon form? Could it also be cratering? Some readers will object, but I place the entire canyon as a Release-Valley Canyon formed with the help of the Flagstaff crater. The Flagstaff crater shows up as the blue ring inside the first white ring on gravity. In the Grand Canyon vicinity, the blue ring is diverted to the Canyon which is a dark blue, very low gravity path. That there is little indication of the Flagstaff crater at this resolution on Landsat is not surprising.
Figure 73: Do you see the similarities between the dark blue path of the Grand Canyon and this wiggly canyon I showed you previously in Mare Orientale? The low gravity paths were already formed by the individual adiabatic responses of all of these craters and probably even more. The Flagstaff crater, because of its size I would place late in the 40 days of cratering, maybe between days 35-38. The adiabatic conversion from the Flagstaff crater would have blown much of the sediments out in one puff, and the fast moving water flowing all the way through it would have quickly washed any remaining loose sediments towards the California coast. Some of them may have dropped out of suspension, but I would not look for a “California River” as some papers have proposed. This flow coastward, would have taken place continuously for several days at this time, and would have been rapid but not highly erosive. Note: many of these lines account for the direction of faults within the canyon, and would make an interesting study.
Figure 74: Let us look again at the Flagstaff crater’s rim in topography. The edges of the “crop circle” (“Gulf of Mexico to Turner Gulch” slide show) are marked with the inside end of the yellow lines. I do not believe the “crop circle” would have been recognized if the Flagstaff crater had not been identified first, but it is real. How many other obvious indications of craters occur but are ignored because we are using a different model? One you have seen some of it, it becomes obvious.
James was writing about the need to practice what we know in our spiritual lives, but it is not an absurd stretch to apply it to everything we know. Is knowing enough? The picture is a poor pun and a tired joke, but you now have new information. Think, what are you going to do with it? Discard it because it can’t possibly be true? Investigate it more? Ignore it because you don’t want it to be true?
Figure 75: Can you apply what you have learned to this figure and locate comparable topographic clues in this region for these CGRS. I see clues for each, and clues for many, many more.
Figure 76: One other form of erosion which played a major role in the canyon we see today was small erosion craters that continued throughout the Flood year and into the Post-Flood period. This probably involved secondary impactors which were chunks of lithology that was shot into orbit by the first LARGE impactors. Secondary impactors may have continued till Sodom and Gomorrah. Horseshoe Mesa is a famous landmark with its horseshoe shape and two arms. Can you see the many fracture linears with dark plant growth. How many of them are indicated in the earlier image for cratering fracturing and the Flagstaff crater? At the end of its west arm . . . . . . .
Figure 77: Is a series of circular lineaments in the plateau’s surface. Only the middle of the circles are on the Plateau surface, but I see them very clearly on Google Earth, and they are equally visible on the ground surface. It would be an interesting study to compare limestone in the circles and that more distant. In the second yellow ring, where the purple arrow points on the “thumb” peninsula some very curious minerals are exposed.
Figure 78: This is the trail out onto the thumb. Around the small tree, along the path and in the distant wall barite is visible. If you ever get down there, the barite is easy to identify. It is white, like cloudy quartz, but four times the density. It feels very heavy. The geologist tell us, barite replaced the quartz chert in these locations. How does chert/quartz melt out of the limestone and make a void barite can fill? It is only about a 6 foot wide band of barite with the quartz chert still present on either side. I suspect either the compression wave or release wave vaporized the quartz in this ring and mobilized the Barite. It would be a great project for some chemistry major’s thesis.
Figure 79: This obvious crater is not so obvious from the ground. It is referred to as Phantom Creek Valley, and I believe I have camped in an overhang on the south wall of the crater. I wish I had known about its total shape when I was there. I spent a day climbed all over it. This would be a great location to see specific characteristic of secondary craters. Note the red near the center of the crater. I will assume it is cutting down to the liver red Hakatai Shale. The Hakatai shale is a far reaching red formation, like the Supai and Moenkopi formations. They are red from distinct red crystals of hematite scattered among the white sand and gray shale particles. Distinct hematite crystals require ~1,000 degrees C (1,832 degrees F) to form in the air. They cannot grow between the sand grains. That is why I propose a vapor condensate to form the sediments in the air, not erosional degradation.
Figure 80: Looking at the area surrounding that circle in Phantom Creek, I see it as only one of many circles. Should I be misunderstood, I am saying much/most of the topography is shaped into circles produced by secondary impacts that makeup the majority of erosional craters. They continued landing after the 40 days, until the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. This would produce the soil for the earth, but could also produce major post Flood catastrophes.
Figure 81: One more look at Hematite. This is the south edge of the Tonto Platform with Cheops Pyramid and Utah Flats in the background. Something turned the normally white Tapeats Sandstone alternating layers of red and white, in a circular shape. Is it the small center of a secondary erosional crater? I believe so.
Figure 82: Many of the side canyons to the Colorado River are still banked with large deposits of “river rounded” cobbles. I would suggest from the image that many are rounded not from tumbling but ablation and show good indication of a heat rind from going through and being spit-out from the adiabatic conversion. I would suggest this happened in the formation of a release valley. The release valley we now call the Grand Canyon.
Figure 83: In a rare glimpse inside a heavenly court room where “gods” set in condemnation before God as He recites their failing, Psalm 82 says, because of their actions “all the foundations of the earth are shaken.” Not covered with water, or filled with fire and smoke, although we have seen that is true in other places, but the very foundations of the earth/ continental shelves are shaken. If we are not going to believe this is pure hyperbole or metaphor, it would take quite a large force. That force would be consistent with impacts of the size I am suggesting. Psalms 29 qualifies as a scene out of such a courtroom: The Psalm is not addressed to the Lord, but about the Lord. It is addressed to the “heavenly beings”/ mighty-son. Assuming, Jehovah includes the portion of the Godhead called the “Son/ Jesus,” we must assume an angel (“sons of God”) is being addressed. Because he is mentioned as a “mighty” son, I will suggest a specific angel, Lucifer, because he is commander of other angels. He is being instructed to give Jehovah glory and strength, which Lucifer refused to do when he said, “I will be like the most High (Isaiah 14:14).” Preferring KJV in verse 7, the voice of Jehovah “divideth the flames of fire.” “Flame” not only denotes the burning, but also refers to the “head’ of a spear, the piercing part. Blazing spears are acting upon, piercing, the many waters, and we can reason from their still burning that the waters did not quench them. “Divide” is the same word for the priest dividing the sacrifice, each portion for its specific use. Not that we want to appeal unnecessarily to a miracle, but the “flames of fire” did not land where they wanted, but where the voice of the Lord directed them “over many waters.” Jehovah makes the whole Earth shake and skip, pierced with flames of fire. That is the Flood as Noah and David knew it.
Figure 84: But, do I presently have an answer for all of the geologic question? No, but I have enough that I think my model is on the right track. The more details I find, the more answers I can supply. Our Lord’s handiwork always shows in the details. “When I consider the heavens, the work of thy finger, the moon and the stars that thou hast ordained . . . . What is man that thou are mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visited him . . . .?”
Once again in the words of David, Psalm 29: “The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of Glory thunders, over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox. The voice of the lord divides the flaming arrows. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness; the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh, The voice of the Lord puts the deer into the pain of birth when its not its time, and devastates the forest, so that in Hs temple all cry, “Glory”. The purpose of the Flood, in my opinion, was to destroy the work of angels with man in the Nephilim Affair, and form a world in which man could once again say, “Glory to God.” Glory to God!
Sevier and Grand Canyon, Pt 3
- There may be no other plot of ground so often used to illustrate many of the geologic processes espoused in textbooks than the Grand Canyon. Geologist talk about it like they have the processes all figured out. Is it just possible that they have gotten it all wrong? This presentation is going to suggest unimaginable cratering was responsible for everything we see there, from the rocks, the sequence, the faults, and the actual canyon. None of it got there by geological processes we can see happening around us today. We will question if some of the processes even work the way everyone has assumed they worked. Gentle reader, do not be afraid to questions the rocks, the processes, even my model, but above all, question the assumptions both you and I have made. Our God is a God of mystery, but He is also a God of Knowing. And in knowing, He is worthy of our praise.