"Xuanwu" supports Hebei's "Grassland Sky Road"

Xuanwu is an ancient divine tortoise with 13 hexagonal shells on its shell. Basalt has hexagonal columnar joints formed when the magma cools, which is quite similar to the shell of a tortoise. The Hebei Grassland Sky Road, which has become popular all over the Internet, is built on basalt that is about 26 million years old. This road was originally a mountain road left over from the installation of wind power on the edge of Bashang, Hebei Province. Now it has been transformed into a scenic avenue and is regarded by tourists as the "most beautiful road".

To the east, you can see the Yanshan Mountains, with towering mountains, great height differences and deep ravines; to the west, you can see the flat, undulating, tree-lined Bashang Grassland. The basalt foundation has supported the "Clean Energy Avenue" and opened up the "Scenic Tourism Avenue".

There is an endless stream of tourists, taking pictures of the scenery, eating grilled lamb chops, sitting around, counting windmills, all busy with their own things, with smiles on their faces, enjoying the "happiness of relaxation". Almost no one cares about the "basalt" that silently supports the beautiful scenery of the "Sky Road". In fact, basalt is not only a "master" of landscape creation, but also a "treasure of resources".

Look at the basalt columns in Dageda Village and Houhua Village along the "Grassland Sky Road". The basalt columns in Dageda Village are more than ten meters high and hundreds of meters wide. The hexagonal columns are densely arranged with diameters between 15 and 80 centimeters. Among them, the columns with diameters of 40 to 50 centimeters are the most numerous. They are very spectacular and only the "Giant's Causeway" in Northern Ireland can be compared with them; the basalt columns in Houhua Village are columnar and overlapping, and peridotite inclusions can be seen everywhere in the basalt. These are all natural wonders that are rare and have great ornamental and scientific research value. They are also landscapes that are in urgent need of protection and development.

Look, there are the basalt column groups in Luotuo Kiln, Shirenbei, Hannuoba and other places in the Bashang basalt distribution area, the basalt lava caves in Bailong Cave, Jieshaba and other places, and the olive gem producing areas in Damaping, Xiaomaping, Jieshaba and other places.

These basalts were named "Hannuoba Basalt" by British geologist Barbor in 1929. The total exposed area of ​​"Hannuoba Basalt" in a broad sense reaches 18,000 square kilometers, reaching Datong City, Shanxi Province in the west and Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in the north. Since the middle of the 20th century, Chinese and foreign geologists have conducted in-depth research on these basalts and achieved fruitful results, making "Hannuoba Basalt" famous in the geological community at home and abroad.

You see, there are many large basalt columnar groups including Penghu in Taiwan and Nanding Island in Fujian; the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland and Devil's Rock in California, USA are all world-famous stone columnar groups.

These basalts are formed by the cooling of the basic magma (basaltic magma) of the upper mantle or lower crust of the earth. The magma below it becomes semi-solidified due to the gradual decrease in temperature. Multiple temperature and pressure centers appear inside. The magma gradually cools and contracts toward the temperature and pressure center, generating a tension field, and forming a crack surface (i.e., tension joint) in the direction perpendicular to the magma cooling surface. In addition to the morphological factors of the crystalline minerals, the distances between the temperature and pressure centers are basically equal, and the distances between the tension joints around the temperature and pressure centers are also basically the same. Therefore, the combination of regular polygonal tension joints is also mostly hexagonal, and sometimes also quadrangular, pentagonal and heptagonal. At the same time, it brought a large number of rare ferromagnesian metal minerals, and provided people with a large number of stone materials and cast stones. For example, the well-known "Code of Hammurabi" is the most representative cuneiform code of the ancient Babylonian Kingdom about 4,000 years ago. It is a brilliant pearl of ancient Eastern civilization and represents the great achievements of ancient Eastern civilization. The code has been handed down to this day, and is also known as the "Law of the Stone Pillar" because it was carved on a 2.25-meter-high black hard stone pillar. The material used for this world-famous stone pillar in the Louvre is black basalt.

With the advancement of science, basalt has been continuously developed and utilized, and fibers, ceramic glazes, etc. have been extracted from it. We look forward to basalt having greater uses, allowing the "Grassland Sky Road" basalt to "fly" farther.