Researchers discover ultra-low velocity zone beneath the Himalayas
Yale researchers are delving deep beneath the Himalayas to investigate dynamic geological processes near the boundary of Earth's core and mantle.
Yale researchers are delving deep beneath the Himalayas to investigate dynamic geological processes near the boundary of Earth's core and mantle.
Earth Sciences
Mar 27, 2024
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Indigenous communities are often perceived as intrinsically cohesive, cherishing shared values, and united by common interests. The "tribes" of South Asia are no exception. Stereotypical and outdated characterizations such ...
Social Sciences
Mar 9, 2022
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With its steep topography and abundant water resources the Himalayas offer sustainable, low-carbon hydropower for energy-hungry South Asia. But there is a catch—the mountain range falls in one of the world's most seismically ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 24, 2021
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How and when do mountains grow? It is tempting to think of mountain formation as something that takes place only extremely gradually, on timescales of tens of millions of years. One tectonic plate slowly pushes up against ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 4, 2021
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844
To elucidate the timing, location and geodynamic models of the India-Asia collision, Yuan and colleagues conducted paleomagnetic and rock magnetic analyses on two key successions that were deposited on the distal northern ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 28, 2020
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6
Researchers from Centre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques (CNRS / University of Lorraine), in collaboration with CEREGE have shown that erosion in the Himalayas is primarily governed by tectonic movements, which ...
Earth Sciences
Jun 10, 2020
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163
Three researchers with the University of Potsdam report that thousands of natural lakes in the Himalayas are at risk of bursting their moraines due to global warming and causing flooding downriver. In their paper published ...
The rate glaciers are melting in the Himalaya is being significantly accelerated by lakes already formed by glacial retreat, new research led by the University of St Andrews has found.
Earth Sciences
Dec 4, 2019
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29
Two sub-parallel belts of Cenozoic aged Himalayan leucogranite on the Tibetan Plateau extend east to west over more than 1000 km, and are regarded as the largest granitic belts in the world. Rare-metal mineralization was ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 30, 2017
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4
Until now, the fauna of the Himalayas was considered to be an "immigration fauna", with species that have immigrated primarily from neighbouring regions to the west and east since the geological formation of this mountain ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 15, 2017
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The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains ( /ˌhɪməˈleɪ.ə/ or /hɪˈmɑːləjə/; Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. By extension, it is also the name of a massive mountain system that includes the Karakoram, the Hindu Kush, and other, lesser, ranges that extend out from the Pamir Knot.
Together, the Himalayan mountain system is the world's highest, and home to the world's highest peaks, the Eight-thousanders, which include Mount Everest and K2. To comprehend the enormous scale of this mountain range, consider that Aconcagua, in the Andes, at 6,962 metres (22,841 ft) is the highest peak outside Asia, whereas the Himalayan system includes over 100 mountains exceeding 7,200 m (23,600 ft).
The main Himalayan range runs west to east, from the Indus river valley to the Brahmaputra river valley, forming an arc 2,400 km (1,500 mi) long, which varies in width from 400 km (250 mi) in the western Kashmir-Xinjiang region to 150 km (93 mi) in the eastern Tibet-Arunachal Pradesh region. The range consists of three coextensive sub-ranges, with the northernmost, and highest, known as the Great or Inner Himalayas.
Some of the world's major river systems arise in the Himalayas, and their combined drainage basin is home to some 3 billion people (almost half of Earth's population) in 18 countries. The Himalayas have profoundly shaped the cultures of South Asia; many Himalayan peaks are sacred in Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism.
Geologically, the origin of the Himalayas is the impact of the Indian tectonic plate traveling northward at 15 cm per year to impact the Eurasian continent, about 40-50 million years ago. The formation of the Himalayan arc resulted since the lighter rock of the seabeds of that time were easily uplifted into mountains. An often-cited fact used to illustrate this process is that the summit of Mount Everest is made of marine limestone.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA