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An ice-covered peak in the Himalayan range pokes through a blanket of clouds.Photograph by Jason Edwards, Nat Geo Image Collection
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The Himalaya ‘breathes,’ with mountains growing and shrinking in cycles
Deciphering these geologic respirations can help scientists untangle earthquake risks and pin down the range’s deadly potential.
ByMaya Wei-Haas
Email
If we could put our planetary clock on fast forward, Earth’s surface would writhe with activity. Continents would scurry across the globe, oceans would open and close, and new mountains would shoot up toward the sky.
Yet even as mountains rise, they also periodically sink back down when the stress from tectonic collisions triggers earthquakes. These events happen in a cycle, like the chest of a rocky behemoth drawing uneven breaths, explains Luca Dal Zilio, a geophysicist at the California Institute of Technology.
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