THE REAL STORY BEHIND ROOF OF THE WORLD

The real story behind " roof of the world"

 By Andrea Thompson August 21, 2008

Called the "Roof of the World" for a reasonable reason - the Tibetan Plateau stands at 3 miles above sea level and is surrounded by a mountain range surrounded by the world's two highest peaks, Mount Everest and K2.

 Is. Although the world's top climbers regularly try to reach the Forbidden Peaks, the remote area is home to a multitude of cultures, from villages in Pakistan to Buddhist parties in Tibet, now part of the People's Republic. ۔ China. Perhaps the most famous person in the region is the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, and an advocate for the peaceful resolution of Tibet's bid for independence. The story of the formation of the Tibetan Plateau and its surrounding peaks is even less well-known. 

The geographical story, as it is known, is familiar to many school children: about 50 million years ago, the subcontinent began to collide with Eurasia, and as soon as it entered the large underground building, the plateau and the Karakoram And the Himalayas were born. . But the story has more. In a review of research on the evolution of the Tibetan Plateau, published in the August 22 issue of the journal Science, funded by the National Science Foundation, a group of researchers have fragmented the geological puzzle to make it more complex and somewhat progressive. ۔ This led to the development of the controversial, modern Tibetan plateau, which was previously imagined. "It's a complex place," said Leah Ryden, lead author of the review at MIT. Putting the pieces together could also help scientists determine the cause of an earthquake in China's Sichuan province in May, which killed tens of thousands of people. 

Clash of the Continents Before India invaded Eurasia, the Tatis Ocean, which separated the two landmarks, was being hijacked under Eurasia. In the late Cretaceous (about 100 to 100 million 65 million years ago) a modern Andes-like volcanic mountain range formed along the southern edge of the Eurasian Plate. But these former mountains "are no longer there," Ryden told LiveScience. Researchers say that this tectonic has already begun to raise parts of the Tibetan Plateau above sea level and may have begun to thicken the continental crust there. After the collision, much of the area now included in Pluto was involved in tectonic changes, with southern and central parts of Tibet reaching higher altitudes (northern parts remained low) as the soil was "shortened" or combined. It was smoked. When the soil crumbled, the peaks of the Himalayas and Karakoram were gradually elevated to the heights of fading. As the collision progressed, material from the lithosphere (the planet's solid outer shell) beneath the surface layer was "thrown" eastward, as Ryden put it. These lithosphere leases helped move the lower trenches eastward in the Pacific Ocean, which is now China. The Crystal Movement Finally, about 20 million years ago, the trenches stopped marching eastward. As India and Eurasia clashed, "goods could not leave the East," Ryden explained. Although some geologists believe that the Crystal Palace continued to build the eastern plateau, Ryden says that there is little evidence of this, and that piles of lithospheric material beneath the plateau have formed a layer. Thickening and increasing in the eastern part of the plateau. "Whether the sub-surface material is moving fast or slow now, geologists aren't sure," Ryden said. By extension, they do not know if the perpetrator is rising or not, although this may depend on the level at which the perpetrator you are talking about is likely to rise, while others may rise. Sink A study of the rate at which rivers have receded through rocks in these areas could help geologists counteract the vertical motions of the plateau. Ryden said the quake in Tibet and Sichuan could be the result of the Sichuan earthquake, the movement of lithoficus below the surface. Ryden said the area where the quake struck was traditionally considered a low seismic hazard. Some geologists say the quake was the result of a conventional force error, in which a piece of crust is pushed into another part. But, "when you look at the whole geographical context," Ryden says, the vertical elevation of the lithosphere in the region can be a mistake. When this material flows eastward, it enters the Sichuan Basin in pieces of an old and strong layer and piles up on the west side of the basin. The interpreter of Rowden and his colleagues is that the error in the vertical and eastward motion caused by this situation caused the earthquake. Although the geology of the Tibetan Pluto, including the actual cause of the Sichuan earthquake, remains a mystery, Ryden is more certain than a decade or two later, but geologists will have a clearer picture of what is happening underneath the "Roof of the World."