Talk:3221: Landscape Features

2026-03-20T17:36:36Z

Erika lovelace:

F1rst P0st!!! [[User:R128|R128]] ([[User talk:R128|talk]]) 17:27, 18 March 2026 (UTC)
:First Times [[Special:Contributions/82.13.184.33|82.13.184.33]] 09:14, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

The ???? in New York is probably the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adirondack_Mountains Adirondack Mountains]:

<blockquote>About 10 million years ago, the region began to be uplifted. It has been lifted about 7,000 feet (2,000 m) and is continuing at about 0.08 inches (2 mm) per year, which is greater than the rate of denudation. The cause of the uplift is unknown, but geologists theorize that it is caused by a hot spot in the Earth's crust.[18] A recent study has revealed a column of seismically slow materials about 30 to 50 miles (50 to 80 km) deep beneath the Adirondack Mountains,[20] which was interpreted to be the upwelling asthenosphere contributing to the uplift of the mountains.</blockquote>

[[User:Zzzt|Zzzt]] ([[User talk:Zzzt|talk]]) 17:58, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Geology being the cause of geological events is a tautology.--[[User:Henke37|Henke37]] ([[User talk:Henke37|talk]]) 18:26, 18 March 2026 (UTC)
:It's only a tautology where the plates are separating. It's a "compressology" where they're colliding, etc. ;) [[Special:Contributions/81.179.199.253|81.179.199.253]] 21:36, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

conterguous* [[Special:Contributions/137.25.230.78|137.25.230.78]] 20:34, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

I wonder if we should have a category for {{w|Isogloss}}. (Whether isoseme or some other variation.) I added in the two others 'of this basic illustrative nature' that I remembered off the top of my head, but I think there might be more. [[Special:Contributions/81.179.199.253|81.179.199.253]] 21:33, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

This page should be in Category: Comics with color [[Special:Contributions/50.47.110.240|50.47.110.240]] 21:05, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

I feel like comic [[3141]] is worth a mention here, but I'm not sure where to put it. [[User:MrCandela|MrCandela]] ([[User talk:MrCandela|talk]]) 22:49, 18 March 2026 (UTC)
:Added to the Adirondock row. [[User:Fephisto|Fephisto]] ([[User talk:Fephisto|talk]]) 00:12, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

This explanation, and working on it, absolutely taught me more about US geology than I learned in school. [[Special:Contributions/2603:800C:1200:596A:7154:D390:7A60:3197|2603:800C:1200:596A:7154:D390:7A60:3197]] 08:29, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

I headered-up the table, to be consistent with the list-subheader. Also rearranged (and bulleted) the list of states (and district, but there are less than 51 lines, so obviously still some 'unstated' (NPI!) ones, not yet sure which) alphabetically, as that's going to be the main referencing reason here (aded "sortable" to the table - mostly for on-demand label-sorting, not so useful in the other columns, but not bothered making them unsortable again). Moved the reference to the other similar comics to the end of the unsubheadered Explanation section (post title-text blurb), as with usual narrative order in such cases.
<br/>You are welcome to (re-)redo, naturally. The by-state list ''could'' easily be a table, too, for resorting purposes (though not much benefit if it's already sorted by its one and only useful 'key' value), or it could be remade as a 'tick grid'/confusion-matrix of 51 'states' against <however many> labels (if you think something like that that helps). ...but probably too much work for too little gain, I think, having already gone through some of these ideas myself, but YMMV. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.237.49|82.132.237.49]] 12:45, 19 March 2026 (UTC)
: Currently missing are: Alabama; Georgia; Louisiana; Mississippi; North Carolina; South Carolina; Tennessee. From which I deduce that someone has an irrational dislike of states ending in 'a' and states with an excess of double letters. [[Special:Contributions/82.13.184.33|82.13.184.33]] 14:57, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

wow, there are [https://www.desmos.com/calculator/0vijdgrmhz a lot] of geology comics in the past year or so. I think Randall has a new interest [[User:R128|R128]] ([[User talk:R128|talk]]) 13:11, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Hotspots create almost-constantly active volcanos, so they are a very bad go-to explanation. Shirluban [[Special:Contributions/147.161.153.84|147.161.153.84]] 14:09, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

;Sections to explain

I'm not a geologist, so I don't know how to answer these questions, but I will leave this template here to eventually be copied into the article:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Location
! Description
! Explanation
|-
| Adirondack Mountains
| ???
|
|-
| Most of northern U.S. border
| Glaciers
|
|-
| Appalachian Mountains
| Continents colliding
|
|-
| Mississippi river basin
| Rivers
|
|-
| SE U.S.
| Farming
|
|-
| Southern Florida
| Ongoing disputes between limestone and water
|
|-
| Southern Missouri/Northern Arkansas
| ...geology
|
|-
| Central column of U.S.
| Farming
|
|-
| Central Idaho/Yellowstone
| A supervolcano
|
|-
| Eastern Washington
| A megaflood
|
|-
| West Coast
| ...a plate tectonic speedrun.
|
|-
| SW
| Water and time
|
|-
| Northern Alaska
| ...geology
|
|-
| Aleutians
| Volcanoes
|
|-
| Hawaiian island chain
| Volcanoes
|
|}
[[User:Fephisto|Fephisto]] ([[User talk:Fephisto|talk]]) 18:59, 18 March 2026 (UTC)
:...uh, why don't I just copy it into the article blank for now, actually?[[User:Fephisto|Fephisto]] ([[User talk:Fephisto|talk]]) 19:00, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

New here, and don't know the formatting, but the table is currently missing the Cascade and Sierra Nevada "Vocanoes" region, though it's pretty self-explanatory. {{unsigned ip|136.56.99.85|21:29, 18 March 2026 (UTC)}}
:Got it. [[User:Fephisto|Fephisto]] ([[User talk:Fephisto|talk]]) 00:12, 19 March 2026 (UTC)
:Also missing the “…geology” section surrounding the supervolcano. {{unsigned ip|146.115.160.214|21:58, 18 March 2026}}
::Got it.[[User:Fephisto|Fephisto]] ([[User talk:Fephisto|talk]]) 00:11, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

'Glacier National Park' in Southeast Alaska is properly 'Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve'

[[User:Dbguy|Dbguy]] ([[User talk:Dbguy|talk]]) 19:55, 19 March 2026 (UTC) Was the morphology of the Great Plains (Central column of the U.S.) really created by farming? How does ~10K years of Native American management of the land for grasslands make it flat? I thought the flat, erm, planar aspect was due to it having been a large shallow seabed.
: Remember the prompt is "what's up with this weird landscape?". I think what's going on in those places is that, given the flat topography, a lot of the "weird" features people point out (especially from the air) are likely to be geometric patterns formed by large-scale crop farming. [[Special:Contributions/136.56.99.85|136.56.99.85]] 21:02, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

I like how we've apparently all agreed at the moment that "Geology outside of Yellowstone in the West is basically just Heart Mountain." [[User:Fephisto|Fephisto]] ([[User talk:Fephisto|talk]]) 14:49, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

The current west coast plate tectonics speed run explanation doesn't quite cover it. The Juan de Fuca plate off the PNW and the Cocos plate off of Central America used to be connected as the Farallon plate. The various geological features of the west coast used to be islands and microcontinents on the Farallon plate that got scraped off and accreted to the growing coastline as the Farallon got subducted. Then, as the divergent boundary between the Farallon and Pacific plates was itself subducted, the resulting faulting scrambled everything. [[User:Erika lovelace|Erika lovelace]] ([[User talk:Erika lovelace|talk]]) 17:36, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

Talk:3103: Exoplanet System

2025-06-16T19:53:17Z

Erika lovelace:

"Faint dust cloud that will cause several papers to be retracted" could refer to either Fomalhaut b (former proposed exoplanet that turned out to be a dust cloud) or Tabby's Star (star with odd irregular dimming pattern likely due to a dust cloud, but was briefly thought by some to be an alien megastructure the speculation of which caused the media to lose their shit). [[User:Erika lovelace|Erika lovelace]] ([[User talk:Erika lovelace|talk]]) 19:53, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:3221: Landscape Features

Talk:3103: Exoplanet System