I initially thought that these were artificial created by color powders till I read the article! Amazing nature! So colorful!
10 August 2016
[h=1]Rainbow cake mountains show stunning slices of colour[/h]
By Emily Benson
YES, this is a real place. Yes, it’s on this planet. The vibrant colours of the mountains dotting China’s Zhangye Danxia Landform Geological Park in Gansu Province lend the peaks their nickname: the rainbow mountains. The strata were originally laid down horizontally, one on top of another, like the layers of a cake.
The mountains’ startling hues came from water and oxygen interacting with iron and other elements in the sediment, along with tiny amounts of other minerals left behind by groundwater creeping through the deposits.
Over millions of years, the layers were buried and solidified into rock. Their distinctive slant was caused by the same tectonic forces responsible for the formation of the Himalayas: as the Indian plate crashed into the Eurasian plate, beginning about 40 or 50 million years ago, the overlying land tilted and crumpled into mountains.
After the layers were elevated, erosive forces such as water and wind carved the craggy contours we see today.
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...id=SOC|NSNS|2016-Echobox#link_time=1471343210
10 August 2016
[h=1]Rainbow cake mountains show stunning slices of colour[/h]
By Emily Benson
YES, this is a real place. Yes, it’s on this planet. The vibrant colours of the mountains dotting China’s Zhangye Danxia Landform Geological Park in Gansu Province lend the peaks their nickname: the rainbow mountains. The strata were originally laid down horizontally, one on top of another, like the layers of a cake.
The mountains’ startling hues came from water and oxygen interacting with iron and other elements in the sediment, along with tiny amounts of other minerals left behind by groundwater creeping through the deposits.
Over millions of years, the layers were buried and solidified into rock. Their distinctive slant was caused by the same tectonic forces responsible for the formation of the Himalayas: as the Indian plate crashed into the Eurasian plate, beginning about 40 or 50 million years ago, the overlying land tilted and crumpled into mountains.
After the layers were elevated, erosive forces such as water and wind carved the craggy contours we see today.
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...id=SOC|NSNS|2016-Echobox#link_time=1471343210
