Monday, February 13, 2012

Metamorphic Rocks & Plate Tectonics of Alderaan

Below is a quick overview of Alderaan.


One thing we can notice for sure is the certain type of mountain ranges that are made up of foliated metamorphic rock. I can tell its foliated rock because of its distinct alignment pattern resulting from directed pressure from beneath the Earths surface. The rock from the mountain almost looks like black marble. Which makes me concur that the rocks from the mountain are in fact metamorphic rock. (Another picture below to verify).
















We can also see from this picture that there's a lot of faults in the mountain resulting from compression, as well as extension, you can see that some rocks have been pushed together as well as pulled apart (top right of picture).

If you take a look at the video again you will also see many different syncline/anticline folds in the land that result from the compression I showed you in the above picture.

Which leads me to my last point, Alderaan has two types of plate tectonics, one, divergence.

We can tell by this video below:


Do you see how the people of Alderaan had to create a massive bridge? This is because below the surface contains sea floor spreading, over a long period the bridge might need to be extended depending on how fast the ocean floor moves.

Two, we can tell Alderaan has a plate that converges with another. The pressure from one of Alderaans plate is converging over another, we see this by the many mountains that Alderaan currently has. Which can also say why there is so many folds all over Alderaan.

(All photos and videos were taken by me during game-play)

Monday, January 23, 2012

Introduction

Hello readers, My name is Miles Allen McClure and I am creating this blog as an individual project for my class.

My chosen location is the fictional planet of Alderaan, located in the Star Wars universe. Specifically though, I will be observing physical geography of Alderaan in the PC game Star Wars: The Old Republic.

I chose this location because out of the Star Wars planets this particular one has similar qualities of Earth. With that being said, it will make it much more easy to write in detail of my findings in Alderaan. Now that I will be learning more about the forms and processes of physical geography, it's time that I look at video games in greater aspect other than playing for enjoyment, but seeing the view of Alderaan for its beautiful geography that it does have. I look forward to taking this class.

Image from: http://static.desktopnexus.com/thumbnails/479862-bigthumbnail.jpg