Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Short Stuff: Mesas: Flat

Transcript

Short Stuff: Mesas: Flat · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Dave's here again, which makes this a
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: special edition of short Stuff. Don't you feel special, Chuck does.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: It's short Stuff. Let's go. So this had a recent
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: inspiration as well as the last one that we just
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: recorded about washer women. This one was Emily and I
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: for her birthday. Every year we go to a new
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: place that we've never been for a weekend. Uh it's
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: some place it's not, you know, obviously super far because
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: it's like a long weekend and we look at a
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: map and just say, like, this looks interesting. And this
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: year it was Santa Fe, New Mexico. Awesome, highly recommend
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Have here been there? I don't think so. I may
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: have driven through, but it's possible it was a different
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: part of New Mexico. I'm not sure. Great town. UH
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: didn't know it, but it's like one of the art
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: capitals of the world. Uh. There's a road called Canyon
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Road where there's literally a hundred plus galleries and you
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: just start at one end and start walking. Uh. Great
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: food to the best meals I've ever had in my life.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: But on the drive from Albuquerque to Santa fe Emily
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: looked over at the expanse and said, what's that big
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: flat mountain over there? And there's like a few of them,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: and I went, I don't know. And then I went,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, and this is a kid from the
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: South and a and his wife from the Midwest. You know,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: because it sounds like we're dummies that we didn't know
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: what this was, But you know what I said, I
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: think that's a mesa. I said, I think a mesa
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: is like a flat topped thing, and it is. And
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: now we're gonna talk about it. Yeah, all those road
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Runner cartoons paid off finally. Yea, yeah, definitely. So um
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the mesa is named after the table, and it's a
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Spanish word for table. And the reason that it has
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: a Spanish name is because in the sixteenth century Spanish
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: explorers slash conqui stores slash colonialists I guess, came up
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: from Mexico in search of Umu's city of gold called
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: the Seven Cities of Cibola, which I had never heard of,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: but it's basically akin to El Dorado. And of course
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: they didn't find it because those kind of lost cities
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: of gold don't actually exist, but they did see some
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: really amazing geological features that no European had ever seen.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: And one of the things that they slapped a label
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: on was those amazing maces that you saw. And again
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: they called it table because it's a flat top and
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: sides that drop off very steeply. That's right. Uh, you
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: can't talk about maces though, without talking about their flatheaded partners.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: The beaute and the plateau and the beginning of the
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: nineteenth century is where the word beaute came from. Of course,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: from the French. Uh. It is not a Spanish word
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: at all, but a beaute and a mesa. Depending on
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: how you talked to There may be a definition, like
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: a literal definition of size, like comparative size. But I
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: think generally you would just say it's a asa if
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: it is wider than it is tall, and it's abute
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: if it's taller than it is wide. That seems sensible
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: because some of these other ones get a little wonky,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: like one one definition of mesas it has to have
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: a surface area of less than four square miles, Like
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: who can tell, Yeah, who's gonna get up their measure?
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: If you can look at that with a thumb, even
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: and be like that's a mesa, that's abute, Yes, and
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: impress your friends who aren't from the Southwest. Yeah. I'm
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: just glad I got it right, because I would have
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: felt like a real dummy if I would have said Mason,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: I was completely off. Yeah. So let's let's take a break,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: an early break, and come back and talk about how
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: these things form. Okay, because it's pretty interesting if you
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: ask me. I agreed. Okay, Chuck, you have masa fever,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: so I think you should kick this off. Well, I mean,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: both of us love uh land forms, we love geographical
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: science and earth science, and it doesn't get any better
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: than maces and buttes and plateaus. My friend. Uh, these
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: are very very flat on top, and it is basically
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: due to the rock that is forming them. Uh, it's
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: sedimentary rock and it's accumulated. This isn't something that happens
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: in an instant. It happens over millions of years these
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: things are formed. But Uh, that top rock, it's called
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: a cap rock, and it's it's flat on top because
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: it is eroded down to that level. It didn't used
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: to look like that. It used to probably be more
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: pointy like a mountain or something, but it has warned
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: away over the years until it gets to that cap rock,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: and then the cop rock says, no, I'm I'm not
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: going anywhere. I'm too hard to eroad. I may even
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: be hard and lava for all you know, but I'm
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: not going anywhere. I'm just gonna be flat, right. That's
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: not the story for the sedimentary rocks, though. Sedimentary rock
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: is laid in layers, made up of little particles of rock,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: and it's pretty hard. But the old saying live by
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: the particle, die by the particle has never been truer
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: when it comes to sedimentary rock, because it can be
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: weathered back into particles depending on whether it's exposed to
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: water or wind, that kind of thing. And when you
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: step back and look at a mesa, what you were
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: looking at is a piece of land that used to
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: be as tall as that keptn't That isn't now because
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: over millions of years, water has run down the sides
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: and carved a bunch of it, including the surrounding landscape away. Yeah,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: and it's it's more water. You did mention when win
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: has a bit of an effect, but not nearly as
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: much as water. Uh, And you know it's just cool
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: like this, Uh, this great article points out that, and
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: this is one of my favorite things. When you get
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: a new land form from the million year erosion of
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: a different land form, like you end up getting something
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: else entirely. And that's the case with Mace's beauties and
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: plateaus um plateau. I don't fully get the difference between
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: a plateau and a mesa. Is it? Is it just
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: that a plateau only has to have one side that's eroded. Yeah,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: it's like the difference between a peninsula and an island.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: But land on land. Okay, well that makes sense. Yeah.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: And the cool thing is that the plateau is the
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: grandfather of mesa's and buttes, right, yeah, I mean the
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: plateau came around first, right. So it's this piece of
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: land that's pushed up, usually from um magma that wants
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: to break through the Earth's crust but can't find a
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: weak enough spot. But it's so strong and there's so
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: much pressure it actually pushes up a pretty good sized
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: chunk of the earth at least on one side. Now
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: you have yourself a plateau. But there may have been
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: a river on that um that part of the land.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: A river might somehow spontaneously form in the rainy season. Um,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of ways that water can end up
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: on a plateau, and as it does, it wants off
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: that plateau. It wants back to sea level as fast
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: as it can go. And as it moves, UM, it
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: takes a lot of that sedimentary rock, not the capstone,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: but the sedimentary rock below it with it. Yeah, And
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: here's the thing with rain out there. It's not like
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: rain here in the Deep South, where there's all this
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: rich soil that just soaks all up and it rains
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: for three days and uh somehow still never floods because
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: the land is just drinking it up. Those arid landscapes
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: out there. The rain comes in very hard and very
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: fast and generally leaves pretty fast, and it's very intense,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: and the water isn't or the ground isn't soaking it
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: up like it is with this rich soil that we have.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: So I remember being out west seeing a storm coming
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: from the distance because you can see forever out there,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: and me and my buddy Brett going, man, that looks ominous,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: and it got closer and closer and closer until we
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: were right in the middle of it and saw sideways rain,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: saw telephone poles being it was almost a tornado literally
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: being ripped up and falling across the road in front
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: of us, and we stopped and got out. It was
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: so scary, and we saw, I'll never forget it. We
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: saw water running uphill. Oh yeah, I've heard this story.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know how to explain it. But we saw
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: a definite like stream of water going and it wasn't
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: like straight up hill or anything, but it was going
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: up in incline and I guess that was just a
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: testament to how much water there was, and it was
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: looking for a place to be right. It couldn't go downhill,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: so it was like, well, we'll just go up I guess,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: I mean eventually found a place to go downhill. I
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: assume we didn't follow it, and we should have. Yeah,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: you guys had your inner Bill Paxson and Helen Hunt.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: They just didn't get fully engaged. I guess. But this water,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: you know, it carries with it a lot of loose sediment,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: and the faster it's running, like it eventually becomes a
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: river and it's just carrying these like, you know, larger
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: and larger pieces of rock and sediment. That's where your money.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Erosion is going to happen to the point where one
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: day you may have, like, oh, I don't know, a
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: grand canyon. Yeah, so that's the river is going to
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: carve out the canyon. So that comes from a plateau
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: where it can and then the canyon can be further
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: divided into things like mesas and eventually beautes. And I think, Chuck,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: I might be wrong, but I think abute is this
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: is uh you um, a younger No, an older mesa.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Wouldn't that be correct? Couldn't that be possible? I guess
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: because they're tallerant, thinner. Yeah, so it's possible that it's
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: just lost more off the sides than the mesa that
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: is nearby, because the Mason's say, hasn't it hasn't been
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: eroded as long as the ute. But regardless, if you
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: look at a mesa or a butte, it's it's got
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: the flat top. It also has the steep sides, but
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: then at the bottom it kind of slopes gracefully away
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: in either direction away from it. And um, the reason
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: why is because that sedimentary rock that that flash flooding
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: and flash upward flowing water takes with it kind of
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: deposits a lot of it at the bottom, at the
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: base of the mesa. But that because it it's characteristic. Look, yeah,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: and you know the best thing about this show is
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: someone who knows a lot more about Earth sciences than
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: we do. Well, hopefully right in and confirm you and say, yeah,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: you were right on it, Josh, Yeah, I'd love hearing that.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Ori gently correct us, and we'll read that. I can't
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: stand that. Now we're fine with those What else you got?
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: I don't really have anything else. You got anything else? No?
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: I think that's it for Masa's ambutes for now. Who knows,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Maybe we'll learn more about it someday and come back.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Shout out Santa Fe. Go check it out. It's a
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: it's a great town. We missed the balloon festival, but
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: go down Canyon Road look at art and then the
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: big shout out to the restaurants, Geronimo and Sason. Literally
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: to the best meals I've ever had right there in
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: that little sleepy town in New Mexico. That's awesome. And
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: happy birthday to Emily too. Um And also I remember
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: now I haven't been to New Mexico. I was just
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: confused from watching Breaking Bad. That's right, Chuck laughed a
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: joke of mine, So that means short, stuffs out,