A geologist's secret dream: the shortest journey to the "center of the Earth" (3 photos)

Gros Morne National Park in Canada is one of the few places where you can step on the Earth's mantle without digging an inch.





Gros Morne Park provides geologists with some of the best exhibits in the world to study the process of plate tectonics.

Under the earth's crust at a depth of 30 to 2900 kilometers there are minerals and rocks in the mantle, which occupies about 80% of the Earth's volume. to a person could not even reach the upper layer of the mantle, except perhaps in fantasy films. But in Gros Morne National Park people can find robe fragments that lie straight under your feet.

October 3, 2017 OLI (Operational Land Imager) on the Landsat 8 satellite received images of the national park Gros Morne in natural colors. It's a world heritage UNESCO covers 1,800 square kilometers of the island Newfoundland off the northeastern coast of North America.

The park contains part of the Long Range Mountains, a subgroup of the Canadian Appalachians, which formed 1.2 billion years ago when modern North America collided with another continent. Since then, these mountains have been eroded and left behind gneiss and granite structures of the Far Range. In the park are some of the highest mountains in Long Range.



The plateau located in the southern part of the park is considered one of its most striking features. The rust-coloured land is rich peridotite rocks of the upper part of the Earth's mantle. rock pushed out to the surface about 500 million years ago as a result subduction process - when two plates of the earth's crust face. Stand out among the lush green park yellowish-red plateaus played a decisive role in confirming theories of plate tectonics.



The Canadian Space Agency is studying the area to succeed in the search for life beyond Earth. Scientists study the ability of microbes to survive in iron-rich rocks, which similar to the extreme conditions of Mars.

One of the biggest natural threats to the park is a large population of moose, which is 5-20 times larger than in other parts of Canada. Appeared in this area around 100 years ago they destroy large swaths of northern forests. Today the park is under the protection of the "Law about the national parks of Canada.