Oh No! India is Sinking!!!

In geography, we learnt that the Himalayas was a young mountain range, growing regularly...
Apparently, India is sinking into the earth's mantle, and that is why the Himalayas is growing higher!

Here's an excerpt from an article from the Discovery News and a video about this.
Fun fact for you: scientists don't really know how the Himalayas formed. I mean yeah, they realize that the India tectonic plate is slamming into the Eurasia plate and has been for about 50 million years, but the mystery is why the mountain range is still growing. Usually when two continents collide it's like a car wreck -- there may be a bunch of mangled crust in the middle (mountains), but both vehicles stop moving.
Turns out, India appears to be sinking into the mantle. A new study based on computer models of the two plates shows that the formation and continued growth of the world's highest mountain range makes the most sense if a dense piece of India is down in the mantle, dragging the rest of the continent down with it.
That may not sound so weird but continents are buoyant; they're supposed to float, not sink. All the subduction you hear about all over the world is dense ocean crust sinking underneath continents. Except in the Himalayas. It's as though two cars collided, and one started to sink into the pavement.
This video gives you a rough outline of the old idea of how the Himalayas form. India's bending here, but it doesn't start heading it into the mantle on its own:


Read more of the article here.

Purple Poise

2 comments:

ananthanarayanan vaidyanathan said...
Sunday, February 21, 2010 1:20:00 AM

with due respect to a budding artist and scientist. Respect for genius does not come in the way for mutual criticism

Purple Poise said...
Sunday, February 21, 2010 5:34:00 PM

Well, I am not sure what to reply! But, thanks mama. And I respect you too for your knowledge and wisdom.

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