Mount Everest is Earth's tallest mountain - towering 8.85km above sea level - and is actually still growing.sloto cash
While it and the rest of the Himalayas are continuing an inexorable uplift that dates back to their birth roughly 50 million years ago when the Indian subcontinent collided with Eurasia, Everest is growing more than expected from this alone. Scientists now think they know the reason why, and it has to do with the monumental merger of two nearby river systems.
Everest has gained roughly 15m to 50m in height due to this change in the regional river system, with the Kosi river merging with the Arun river about 89,000 years ago, the researchers estimated. That translates to an uplift rate of roughly 0.2mm to 0.5mm per year.
The geological process at worksloto cash, they said, is called isostatic rebound. It involves the rise of land masses on Earth's crust when the weight of the surface diminishes. The crust, Earth's outermost layer, essentially floats atop a mantle layer made of hot, semi-liquid rock.
A tourist looking at a view of Mount Everest from the hills of Syangboche in Nepal in 2009. (File photo: Reuters/Gopal Chitrakar)