Why are the Himalayas collapsing?

The highest mountains on earth are located in the Himalayas. For example, the Tibetan Plateau is 5 km above sea level, higher than the highest peaks of the Alps. This mountain chain resulted from the collision between the continents India and Eurasia, which began about 50 million years ago and is still active today. At the same time, geologists have evidence that the Himalayas, while still growing due to North-South compression, are also collapsing to the east. Previous studies have suggested that this collapse is due to the plateau being too high and unable to support its weight, a bit like a sandcastle begins to collapse when too much sand is put on its top. However, this argument does not explain why the collapse occurs only to the east and not in the other directions. A new study, just published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications, involving the researchers of the Instituto Dom Luiz (IDL) and Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa (FCUL) João Duarte and Filipe Rosas, showed that the solution to this problem lies at the border between the Pacific Ocean and the continental margin of Earnern Asia, near Japan and Philippines. In this zone there is a limit of tectonic plates characterized by the presence of large subduction zones, where several tectonic plates dip under each other. Through laboratory experiments, similar to small scale models, simulating collisions between plates, the researchers have shown that these subduction zones induce a force on the Eurasian plate that drags it to the East towards the Pacific Ocean. The action of these forces is causing Eurasia to fragment into what is causing the largest mountain of the world to collapse.

Know more about this work here.

See some news about this work published in the media here.