What is the maximum height that mountains on Earth can reach? ● A major paradigm shift in the case of the Great Extinction, the largest extinction of life in history ● Do you have a good memory? Don’t rely on it!

What is the maximum height that mountains on Earth can reach?

Since 1956, the year of official recognition of the height of the summit of Everest, the height of 8,849 meters has remained the official land height record. This question is moot, as Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano could also enter the equation, whose height from its submarine base to its summit would be about 10,000 meters. But the question is different, namely: what is the maximum height the top of the earth can reach?

From the geological data we have now, Everest would not be the highest peak in Earth’s history. Some evidence suggests that the Scandinavian Alps may have reached heights of 10,000 meters, while the Appalachian Mountains, some of the oldest on Earth at nearly 400 million years old, may have reached or even surpassed the current records of the Tibetan Plateau.

Geologists predict that peaks even higher than Mount Everest, K2, Kangchenjunga or Lhotse will form in what is now the Mediterranean Basin as the African continental plate continues to advance towards the Eurasian plate. However, to get there, you will have to wait about 50 million years, until the future continent of Eurafrica is born, and until the Mediterranean mountains reach their maximum height.

A height which, since this is what we are interested in today, would not exceed 10,000 meters, which is the maximum average height that the top of our planet can reach. Compared to Mars, where Mount Olympus reaches 21.9 km. height above sea level, or with the moon Io and its 18.2 km Boösaule Montes., Earth has several things that the mentioned celestial bodies do not have or do not have at all. Primo, tectonic plates. Second, greater gravitational force. Tertiary, elements leading to more pronounced erosion.

At the same time, the mentioned elements act on the Earth in such a way that somewhere at an altitude of 10,000 meters above sea level, a balance is created that cannot be exceeded. Gravitational force pushes the mountain under its own weight, its base becomes softer under the influence of high temperatures under the earth’s crust, and erosion by glaciers and other natural phenomena will stabilize the height at a maximum of 10 kilometers. . This is the maximum average height that can theoretically and practically be reached on Earth.

A major paradigm shift in the case of the Great Extinction, the largest extinction of life in history

252 million years ago, life on Earth reached the point of no return. After much debate as to why life could have ended suddenly before it had even begun, it was determined that the culprit was a Siberian supervolcano that had been erupting continuously for 200,000-1 million years, with a caldera the size of Europa. today.

Since then, a mega-eruption would have caused a domino effect that would have wiped out about 90% of life, the largest extinction on this planet. The problem is, we’re still learning what happened back then. And the surprise came from China, more precisely from the University of Geology in Wuhan, where Chinese scientists discovered new evidence of what gave rise to the Dead Sea.

The study, published by them in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, suggests that it was not one eruption, but three. And this process did not begin 252 million years ago, but was preceded by two major episodes, 262 and 259 million years ago, respectively, in the middle of the Permian period.

After analyzing uranium isotopes in sediment samples from the South China Sea, as well as mercury samples in the same sediments, Chinese researchers concluded that the waters had since become anoxic after two major volcanic eruptions in what is now China. Two episodes in which, thus, life received two strong blows.

At the moment, very little is known about the consequences of the two eruptions. It’s just that life in the oceans is taking a big hit. The fact that she did not even have time to recover before the impact of the Siberian supervolcano becomes certain. And the fact that it came to the brink of extinction after not one catastrophic event, but three, seems to better explain the apocalypse at the end of the Paleozoic, or the end of “old life.”

Do you have a good memory? Don’t rely on it!

False memories can occur in a split second. In addition, memories seem to reflect not what we experienced, but what we expected to experience, according to a more than interesting study published in PLOS One and signed by a group of researchers from the University of Amsterdam.

This team tested at least 534 volunteers who were shown a series of letters of the Latin alphabet. Immediately after viewing the corresponding letters, the subjects were asked to recall the presence of a certain letter. Let’s say the letter S.

Well, after just half a second of viewing, almost 20% of those polled said they had seen it. After three seconds, their number increased to 30%. The problem is that the letter C did not appear there, except in its inverted version. As noted by the experts, the pseudo-list. But the partisans did not see it that way.

This means, say the Dutch researchers, that our brain is changing the memory, creating false memories based on what it expects to see. In the same vein, short-term memory can be much more complex than we think.

The fact that the number of those who made mistakes increased during the allotted time (3 seconds in a row) also suggests that the false memories were not formed immediately, but over time. And over time, long-term memories become as far from the truth as possible. In conclusion, if you rely on your “elephant” memory, you better think twice after reading this study.

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