The powerful earthquake that hit Nepal in April caused the tallest mountain in the world to move more than an inch in a southwesterly direction, even though it had been moving to the northeast, completing a trip of about 40 cm in that direction over the past decade.
Evening-colored view of Everest from Kala Patthar, Nepal (Daniel Prudek / Thinkstock)
Two earthquakes hit Nepal just before monsoon season: a 7.8-magnitude monster on April 25 and a 7.3-magnitude quake on May 12. More than 8,700 people in Nepal were killed in the natural disaster, which triggered landslides and destroyed half a million homes.
Damage from the first quake covered more than 5,600 square miles (more than 14,000 square kilometers), NBC News reported.
The April 25 quake actually reversed the gradual northeasterly course of Mt Everest, the tallest peak in the world, according to the state-run China Daily, which cited a June 15 report from the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping, and Geoinformation.
But while Mt Everest’s movement may grab headlines, it’s nothing compared to what happened to the shape of the ground near Kathmandu, closer to the quake’s epicenter.
The ground there was lifted by about three feet, according to preliminary data from Europe’s Sentinel-1A radar satellite, NBC noted, quoting Richard Briggs, a geologist at the US Geological Survey in Golden, Colo. And for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction—you remember Newton’s Third Law—which means the ground to the north of Kathmandu, behind the fault slip, sunk.
“Everest is way out on the edge of that possible downward trough,” NBC quoted Mr Briggs as saying. Mt Everest may have dropped about an inch during the quake, but the Chinese agency reported no loss of height. Mr Briggs said that about 60 miles of mountain range north of Kathmandu dropped significantly as a result of the earthquake, however, regardless of what the Chinese government says.
