Why is Everest Still Holding The Title of The Tallest Mountain?

^{Everyone loves to grow continuously and so is a lot of non living thing such as mountains and when it comes to beating ones record, mount everest has become known for it.}

^{Tens of millions of years ago, a tectonic plate at the south of Eurasia crashes into the southern borders of the continent and after the crash, there was a tectonic shift leading to a 3km rise into the air. This was still being looked at but the collision wasn’t over as 50 million years later, another slab of land which we now currently know as India slammed into the same region going underneath the plate and causing the land to go more higher into the air. The high lands at the time led to peaks in the himalayan regions known as mountains.}

^wikimedia

^{While the himalayan peaks raced to the top, one mountain did beat others to hold the championship of the tallest mountain and that is what we now know as Everest or chomolungma as it is known by locals and the mountain is known as the tallest mountain in the world outgrowing its neighbors but while it does that, it is still growing unendingly.}

^{As at today, it is over 250m tall and it continues to grow but even faster than the rate at which scientists and experts expect it to grow. Although there are no land smashing currently, India is still moving under Asia and that’s enough reason for the himalayn mountains to continue to grow even when ordinary weathering is weathering down the himalayas just as it is doing other mountains around the world but wait, erosion isn’t all bad. Just as it shaves mountains, its shaving still makes them tall.}

^**rawpixel

^{The process of weathering can be confusing especially when one is looking at it from the normal point of view but this cannot be viewed that way. The earthcrust where we stand on and other mountains come out from isn’tstaying in one place, it is floating on the top mantle which is a layer of rock that flows slowly. With the movement of the earth crust, what we know as ground level doesn’t necessarily have to be ground level. One if the reasons why the earth isn’t stable is because it continually moves and it is usually as a result of weight where the crust sinks into the mantle when the weight is heavier or lift up when it is lighter.}

^{So with this, Everest will float higher or lower on the mamtle depending on its weight and currently, everest is rising by 2mm yearly. Even when you add up all the factors around why a mountain to rise high, it doesn’t still add up to why everest is increasing at such speed compared to other himalayan moutain.}

^{Some scientists attributes the increase in size of the mountain to the Arun river which washes through the mountain before rushing into a bigger river causing the land to float higher around the side of the river and since this happened on this side, it leads to the tugging of the sorrounding area. So the rising land around the Arub river led to a pull up of the mountain.}

---

---

^Reference

^{https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-022-00230-0
https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth109/node/870
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13382
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2009039117
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01535-w
https://open.maricopa.edu/physicalgeology/chapter/9-4-isostasy/
https://www.nature.com/articles/357680a0}