The highest mountain in the world has grown by 50 meters: what is happening to Everest and how scientists explain it

Everest, with its 8,849 meters, is the tallest mountain on Earth. Interestingly, the largest giant of our planet, located in the Himalayas on the border of China and Nepal, continues to grow.

Scientists have finally solved the anomaly of Everest's rise, which has already grown by 50 meters. The reason is the merger of two neighboring river systems, writes IflScience.

According to scientists, the Himalayas continue to rise, which dates back to their birth about 50 million years ago, when the Indian subcontinent collided with Eurasia.

However, Mount Everest, also known as Jomolungma in Tibetan or Sagarmatha in Nepali, is 238 meters higher than its neighboring mountain, and this gap continues to widen over the years. Scientists believe they know the reason, and it has to do with the monumental merger of two neighboring river systems.

"Mount Everest is a magnificent mountain of myth and legend, and it's still growing. Our study shows that as the neighboring river system cuts deeper, the loss of material is causing the mountain to rise further up," said study author Adam Smith.

According to the scientists, Everest gained about 15-50 meters in height due to a change in the regional river system. This happened when the Kosi River merged with the Arun River about 89,000 years ago, the researchers calculated. This means that the rate of rise of Jomolungma is approximately 0.2-0.5 millimeters per year.

The scientists explained that the geological process that is taking place is called isostatic rebound. It is associated with the rise of land masses on the Earth's crust when the weight of the surface decreases. That is, as the rivers changed their course over time, this led to accelerated erosion, which carried away huge amounts of rock and soil, reducing the weight of the region near Everest.

Researchers have estimated that isostatic rebound accounts for about 10% of Everest's annual rate of ascent.

This geological process is not unique to the Himalayas. "The classic example is Scandinavia, where the land is still rising in response to the melting of the thick ice sheets that covered the region during the last ice age," said one of the study's leaders, researcher Jin-Gen Dai of the China University of Geosciences in Beijing.

Study co-author Adam Smith, a doctoral student at University College London's College of Earth Sciences, added that GPS measurements show the continued rise of Everest and the rest of the Himalayas.

This rise is outpacing the continuous surface erosion caused by factors such as wind, rain and river flow. As this erosion continues, the rate at which Everest rises from isostatic rebound may increase, Smith said.

Neighboring peaks, including Lhotse, the fourth highest mountain in the world, and Makalu, the fifth highest, are also getting a boost from the same process.

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