( .. Continental collision - suffused in the golden glow of wishful thinking .. )
"... Among the most dramatic and visible creations of plate-tectonic forces are the lofty Himalayas, which stretch 2,900 km along the border between India and Tibet. This immense mountain range began to form between 40 and 50 million years ago, when two large landmasses, India and Eurasia, driven by plate movement, collided. Because both these continental landmasses have about the same rock density, one plate could not be subducted under the other. The pressure of the impinging plates could only be relieved by thrusting skyward, contorting the collision zone, and forming the jagged Himalayan peaks...." (link)
Fig.1. Mount Everest. This is the image offered by the USGS to illustrate the point of "thrusting skyward, .. contorting the collision zone". (Image from the website of the USGS) (20170927). [Nice pic., but not very informative re."thrusting skyward".]
"Contorting"? "thrusting skyward"? - indeed, .. Just in case you would like to see what is meant by 'contortions' and 'skyward thrusting', the USGS show them suffused in the golden glow of sunset. Nice pic., but not very informative re. "contorting". Here is better. You really have to hand it to them, don't you, ..for sheer unadulterated nonsense. (I always thought the jagged peaks were a result of erosion. You? .. And just see that flat horizon!) (smooth Earth) ("flatter than it used to be.")
T.L. Morton (1996) spices it up a bit, likening it to gladiatorial combat:-
Fig.2. Continents in collision at a convergent plate boundary. "Like the meeting of two Sumo wrestlers, continental collision stands the crust straight up, slowly giving rise to high mountains. As the crust is forced upwards it bends, buckles and twists..."
"The two sumo wrestlers enter the ring. Crouching, they watch each other like strange dogs meeting in an alley. Slowly they circle, grunting and flexing, beads of sweat glistening on their broad, oiled shoulders. In a sudden explosion of muscle they charge forward, flesh collides with flesh and the Earth shakes. The impact stands both wrestlers straight up. Straining and pushing they jockey for leverage and position - bulk against bulk = huge and proud.
"India and Asia met in this manner. Buckling, bending and twisting the crust the collision stood the two continents straight up and the Himalayas slowly rose. Continent colliding with continent forms mountains of buckled, bent and twisted rock; the Appalachians are mere remnants of such a collision, whereas the Alps, still tall, speak proudly of the collision between Africa and Europe."(Extract from T.L. Morton, 1996, Music of the Earth, Plenum Press, 312pps)
"India and Asia met in this manner. Buckling, bending and twisting the crust the collision stood the two continents straight up and the Himalayas slowly rose. Continent colliding with continent forms mountains of buckled, bent and twisted rock; the Appalachians are mere remnants of such a collision, whereas the Alps, still tall, speak proudly of the collision between Africa and Europe."(Extract from T.L. Morton, 1996, Music of the Earth, Plenum Press, 312pps)
Well, ..you know, ... What can you say? The point is that publishers actually publish this stuff, in the interest of educating the public, and then scientists complain about Christian fundamentalism taking hold in our schools (footnote*). Why shouldn't it (take hold), with rubbish like the above being peddled to appeal to the public, and prepare schoolies for the real deal once they go to uni to 'study' how. There's probably a case for a kindergarten 'activity' in there too, given the "clashing" and "trashing" that masquerades as 'sport' these days.
This is every bit as ludicrous as the ten centimetres of dyke intruding the ridges every year moving the continents, or helping to push the ocean floors down subduction zones, ..and would be funny if it were not firmly ensconced in the sanction of academia, and were it not factually incorrect: the mountains of the Himalyan front are as much flat or slightly tilted as is much of the Alpine region of Europe, as they are bent, buckled and twisted. Moreover the pull-apart of the Mediterranean lying between Africa and Europe mark this as as a zone of extension, not compression, ...as does the Persian Gulf lying between Saudi Arabia the Zagros Mountain chain - and the Ganges Basin in front of the Himalayas.
The Himalayas are collapsing from a once-curvature of the Earth that was tighter than that of the present day.
Mountain *building* by plate collision is a *MYTH*
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