How Do Volcanoes Create Towering Columns in Rock? Discover how columnar joints form in volcanic rocks, creating stunning landscapes like Giant's Causeway and Devil's Postpile.

Eventually, the cooling basalt broke into the hexagon-shaped columns of rock that still create such an impressive pattern millions of years later. Patterns in animals ...

To figure out how they're built, a team of researchers and students at the University of Liverpool built an apparatus meant to recreate the phenomena. The team took basalt columns from Iceland and ...

Columns in the Takachicho-kyo Gorge in Japan, showing the colonnade and entablature common in these columnar jointed basalt flows. Photo by Juuyoh Tanaka / Flickr. One of the most famous places to see ...

Article continues below this ad Eventually, the cooling basalt broke into the hexagon-shaped columns of rock that still create such an impressive pattern millions of years later. Patterns in animals ...

They might look like they've been carved by hard, but columns in lava are the product of how molten rock cools.

Eventually, the cooling basalt broke into the hexagon-shaped columns of rock that still create such an impressive pattern millions of years later.