Okay I was totally wrong about how fast mountains form

I used to think mountain building was this super slow, steady process over millions of years. But I was reading a paper from the University of Utah last week about the Himalayas, and it said some of the big uplift events can happen in bursts over just a few thousand years. That's basically overnight in geologic time. It matters because it changes how we think about erosion and climate patterns tied to those rapid changes. I feel like a lot of people still have the old 'slow and steady' idea stuck in their heads. Has anyone else seen newer research on this kind of pulsed uplift in other ranges?

2 comments

2 Comments

charlie_roberts8726d ago

Honestly that Utah paper is super interesting, but the wording can trip people up. Tbh those "bursts" over a few thousand years are still incredibly slow by any human measure. It's more like the process isn't a smooth line, but has faster and slower chapters. The old "slow and steady" idea is mostly right for the whole picture, it just has these pulses inside it. Ngl it's a cool detail that changes how we model things like rivers, but the big takeaway is still millions of years.

skylerg1726d ago

Yeah, @charlie_roberts87 is right about the scale. I read that too, and those "fast" bursts are still like a foot of erosion every hundred years. It just means the old models were a bit too simple, not wrong.