The geography of India is very influenced by the tectonic plate associated with this subcontinent. This is remarkable in places like the Himalayas, the result of the clash between this plate and the Eurasian. However, dynamics change and plates can disintegrate.
Horizontal cut. A New hypothesis On the interaction between tectonic plates, it could yield new doubts about the geological process that gave the Himalayan mountain range the highest peaks in the world. It would be an interaction never designed before: the horizontal break of a tectonic plate.
The clash of an era. The mountain range between the heart of the Asian continent and the Indian subcontinent was formed between 40 and 50 million years ago when the Indian continental plate crashed into the Eurasian plate. The accumulation of the volume of these two masses of land implied that the earth’s crust was becoming thicker in this region, creating a colossal mountain range.
This is a still unfinished process since the Indian plaque continues if it derives north, accumulating more mass and raising even more summits such as Everest. The mountain range grows at the rate of one centimeter per year.
The subduction of the plate. So far the dominant hypothesis about what was happening underground in that border region contemplated the idea that the Indian plaque was undergoing a subduction process. That is, the Indian plaque was immersing under the Euroasyathic.
At the same time, the Eurasian plate is transformed, folding and increasing in thickness, generating a region where the earth’s crust is more bulky. The new hypothesis Contemplate a different scenario.
A new hypothesis. In it, part of the Indian plaque would be suffering a subduction process, but not all. As a knife cutting a bread bar to prepare a snack, the eurasian plate would be cutting in two, horizontallythe Indian plaque.
This would imply that it would be part of the latter that would also be in the superficial zone, wrapping the Eurasian plate. Those responsible for this idea presented their defense at the conference of the American Geophysical Union and Through an article In the repository Ess Open Archive.
Two ways to break. The rupture of a tectonic plaque is not a phenomenon at all strange. An example We can find it in Africa and its tectonic plate. The African continent as we know it will disappear in a few million years when a fracture divides it by two throughout a North-South Axis that will separate the easternmost area from the continent from the rest of Africa.
This is the conventional rupture that allows tectonic plates to reorganize thereby causing continental drift. A drift that still keep many secrets That we are just beginning to discover.
In Xataka | We just found the remains of a tectonic plate under the Pacific. And they shouldn’t be there
In Xataka | How the Andes became so great in such a short time had always been a mystery. Until now
Image | POT
*An earlier version of this article was published in February 2024