How do these rocks turn red? The answer is related to iron, which combines with other elements to form minerals famous for their red and rust colors.
From the beginning, the iron on the earth came from an ancient supernova event, that is, the collapse of a big star that ran out of energy and "died". After these stars collapse (due to the extreme gravity at their centers), they release a lot of new energy, which fuses elements together to produce heavier elements, including iron.
Jessica Karp, a senior lecturer and associate dean of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Arizona, said that when the force generated by this collapse becomes too great, the collapsed star explodes outward and sends elements into space. [photo timeline: how the earth was formed]
"When the earth was first formed, it grabbed a bunch of these elements, including iron, from the surrounding space," Karp told Life Science in an email.
In the early history of the earth, there was almost no oxygen in the atmosphere in Archean (4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago). Terry Engelder, a professor of earth science at Pennsylvania State University, said that iron can be dissolved in water without oxygen, so the Archean oceans in the early days of the earth carried a lot of dissolved iron. however
Single-celled organisms began to produce oxygen through photosynthesis, which is a process of using sunlight to promote the reaction between water and carbon dioxide, thus producing carbohydrates and oxygen. KDSP, KDSP, KDSP, oxygen enters the ocean and combines with iron, resulting in the formation of iron oxide minerals, such as hematite (Fe2O3) which is usually red. Karp said that when a metal reacts with oxygen in the air and rusts, KDSP KDSP, an oxidation reaction that you may be familiar with, rusts. In rocks, only small mineral particles such as hematite and magnetite contain iron. Engelder said that these minerals were oxidized and turned into rust, which turned the rocks red. The formation of minerals "KDSP" and "KDSP" leads to the formation of banded iron, which is the most important iron ore in the world. These strata are "banded" because they contain a layer of hematite between silica layers, which were deposited as sedimentary rocks from Late Archean to Mesoproterozoic (2.5 billion to 54/kloc-0.0 billion years ago). According to 20 16 Frontier Research of Earth Science, KDSP, KDSP and KDSP (Katia. (Shutter frame)
For example, banded iron construction appeared in Caragas, Brazil; Lake Superior, Canada; Hammersley Basin, Western Australia; Northern China; Mesabi iron mine in Minnesota.
Appears on the vermilion cliff in Arizona, and the red color comes from iron-rich minerals scattered in the sedimentary rocks of the site.
"Red sandstone is very common in the western United States," Karp said. They can be found in sedona, Arizona and Red Rock Canyon National Park in Mojave Desert, California. "Volcanic rocks" include other red rock formations containing iron oxide minerals, including volcanic rocks in Wyoming, Montana and Colorado, and limestone cliffs in the Grand Canyon, which are dyed red by iron oxide minerals oozing from the strata above them. "kdspe" kdsps original article on life science.