We ’re not sure yet , butMount Everestmay have shrivel up a piddling – or grown a little – and both Nepalese and Indian authorisation are investigating .
According to Surveyor - General Swarna Subba Rao , India ’s central mapping agency will send an jaunt to thehighest top on Earthto double - check whether or not it turn a loss or gain a small bit of elevation as a upshot of recent architectonic action in the realm .
“ We do n’t bed what happened , there ’s been no confirmed report , ” Rao toldBBC News . “ Some scientists do believe it has funk . But there ’s a school of mentation it may have farm . ”
for check , GPS measurement and elaborated cartography will be carry out in a mates of month at the most before the final outcome is declared .
Currently , Everest is thought to be 8,848 meters ( 29,028 feet ) above sea spirit level . The alteration in height , whichever way it goes , will in all likelihood only be a few centimeters , if that .
But waitress – how on Earth do mountains suddenly change tallness ? Well , apart from being slowly eroded from the top down over fourth dimension , all it takes is apowerful enough earthquake .
The devastatingApril 2015 temblor in Nepal , register as a 7.8 M event , may have just been powerful enough . Within just 45 seconds , a 30 - kilometer ( 18.6 - mil ) stretch of the Main Himalayan Thrust – the slipping fault strain in question – moved east at speed of up to 3 kilometers ( 1.9 miles ) per second .
As expected , this caused quite a significant amount of land stand-in change . Some parts of the neighborhood sank into the ground , whereas others moved skywards . Some sections moved vertically by around9 meters(roughly 30 foot ) .
There was passel of sidelong movement too . Kathmandu , the capital letter city , move from its original patch by about 3 meters ( intimately 10 feet ) .
At the clock time , satellite measure seemed to show that there had been no change in the top of Everest , but for some unexplained reason , experts are now beginning to suspect this was untimely .
Still , we do n’t get it on whether or not there has been a change , or what precisely the change has been . So the story at present is that – to be honest with you – we have no idea what ’s going on . Sorry .
