Ha! You thought I was going deep into some high-level physics, right? This long title is the fancy term for a precipitation process that is the current best hypothesis for the why these structures pictured below form in sedimentary rock. Known as Liesegang rings, these are composed of precipitating iron oxide embedded in sandstone. This image was taken at Garden of the Gods in the Shawnee region of south-eastern Illinois, a wonderful place for finding Liesegang rings, but I have also found them on the western side of the state on the sandstone bluffs carved by the Mississippi River. It’s hard to believe that in this day and age science does not have a firm answer as to why a phenomenon like this occurs. Do a quick web search and you can find and read multiple hypothesis suggested by chemists over the past century. This phenomenon has chaos written all over it as there is still no model that can predict every nuance and anomaly despite the work of computer scientists and physicists. Maybe the answer is not random patterns due to the unpredictable chaos of the natural world. Maybe there is a hand in this design. Can you find the depiction of Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio? 😉
A Thousand Acres of Silphiums 