10 facts and misconceptions about modern Earth

Since the first man in the history of space exploration rose into space and saw the vast expanses of our blue ball, people literally swept maniacal idea to find out absolutely all the mysteries of our planet. In the world much more interesting and unusual. But sometimes happens so that some new things that we know are perceived by us not as they really are. So there are misconceptions. Check out our selection of 10 interesting facts and misconceptions about the Earth.

Mount Everest is growing in breadth and not ввысь



About fifty million years ago the Indian subcontinent "decided" that he was tired to be in the neighborhood with the southern part of the equator, and he began his movement on the Indian ocean to the North. As a result, the subcontinent collided with Asia. Thus was formed the Himalayan mountain range, including mount Everest. Today the height of this mountain is about 9 kilometers and it is recognized as the highest mountain on Earth, located above the sea level. The collision of India and Asia is still ongoing, and therefore needs to continue the growth of the mountain, right?

Wrong, say scientists who conducted careful measurements of the height of the mountain. Cardio, Poretti, Professor, University of Trieste (Trieste — a city in the North of Italy) in 1995 found that mount Everest is not growing upwards, as previously thought. The difference in the size of the effect rather as measurements, whose accuracy level has certainly improved over the years. Poretti, said that the ongoing continental collision between India and Asia actually makes Everest moving to the North-East, about 42 millimeters per year.

So when another conqueror of the mountain peaks climb to Everest, as in 1953, first made by sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, he will rise to the same height as the pioneers, but almost 3 meters North-East from the point in space where it was first recorded record-breaking ascent.

The highest mountain in the world is Mauna Лоа



By the way, speaking of Everest — the mountain is not the tallest on Earth in absolute value. Mauna Loa (which translates from the Hawaiian "Long mountain") is part of Hawaii island and part — megavolcano. Of course, visually Mauna Loa is not even close can be compared with the height of mount Everest, but it's only because that big piece of rock sunk deeper and we can see only its top.

Scientists estimate that from the bottom to the top of the true height of Mauna Loa is slightly more than 10.2 kilometers, which makes it much higher than mount Everest. An important role in the calculations of the plays and the weight of the mountains, it is much more than Everest. The fact that Mauna Loa takes up almost half the island of Hawaii. As already noted, this mountain is a volcano and volcanoes of this size are called "boards" — because they are spread over a very large plane and have a low profile, in General, as with shield. Such volcanoes are formed as a result of repeated outpourings of volcanic lava. The molten lava burst from Mauna Loa so quickly that she had no how to quickly settle down and cool off, thereby increasing the area of the volcano.

Mauna Loa erupted frequently, and many of these eruptions lasted for millions of years. As a result of Mauna Loa is the largest active underwater volcano in the world — its volume (including the underwater part) is more than 80 000 cubic kilometers. The depth of the Pacific Ocean at the point where Mauna Loa first started erupting, is about 5 kilometers. Over many millions of years, spewing lava created mountain which rose out of the water and now stands at the level of 4.17 km above sea level, and at the same time is a greater part of the island of Hawaii.

But that's not all. The fact that the immense weight of Mauna Loa over time caused the ocean floor to sink (be compacted) for another 8 miles below. Having taken heed of this fact, it becomes clear that the total height of this volcano is more than 17 kilometers, which makes Everest look like with him as a small rocky hill.

Tornado невидимы



With the threat of a tornado the best way to find yourself some solid underground shelter. However, the question here is that how we can see this tornado, because the air is invisible? In fact, from a technical point of view, we see not just the air, and condensing the cloud of water droplets, and dirt and debris. A tornado is formed from the invisible funnel of air, which expands and sucks in everything that comes her way.

Usually tornadoes are formed in superyachting — a giant thundercloud, which has both the incredibly beautiful shape and a destructive force. Scientists still can not confidently and accurately explain what causes the vortex flow to move down from superjacent to the ground. Perhaps the root cause here are the temperature differences at the edges of the wind flows. The observations of scientists indicate that water vapor usually condenseries inside the rotating funnel of air that comes from superataka, but tornadoes can form a vortex flow on the ground long before the funnel formed.

For example, the picture above shows the tornado only with partially formed funnel cloud. If the vortex was close to you and still not managed to collect incriminating his kind of garbage, then the consequences would have been catastrophic. You would just not see it.

Clouds weigh тонны



The expression "light as a cloud", the next time compliment your sweetheart now will seem quite inappropriate. We all used to think that cloud is nothing like a bunch of fog, or something like that. However, the clouds are incredibly heavy. The average Cumulus cloud consists of water droplets, and weighs 550 metric tons (500 tons). Such a Behemoth can float in the sky because the atmosphere around it weighs more.

Cumulus clouds are in the lower layers of the atmosphere. Air molecules here have the weight of 1 kilogram per square centimeter. The average surface area of the human body is 12-15 thousand square centimeters and the result of calculations, it is clear that the pressure on her will be about 15 tons. Why not flatten? The fact that the outside air pressure is balanced by the pressure of its inside our body.

In addition, the air is the same fluid as water. Here comes into play the law of Archimedes — buoyancy force acting on the cloud, equivalent to the weight of the buoyancy of his air. In other words, the multi-ton clouds floating in the air for the same reason that ships can float on water.

On Earth there are magnetic торнадо



The experts of space Agency NASA were surprised when the spacecraft Messenger, circling around mercury, found inside the magnetic field of the planet "tornado" in diameter more than 800 kilometers.

These phenomena move the magnetic flux, or "plasmoids", are formed when the magnetic field of mercury faces the Sun's magnetic field. Scientists believe that this fact is a result of the thin atmosphere of mercury, the way he has. Of solar wind (plasma ejected by the Sun), forming a funnel, which descends to the surface of mercury, where, thanks to electrically charged particles from the soil are released residual gases.

Quite a long time, scientists know that the magnetic field of the Earth and the Sun are linked. In this regard, for example, formed of the Northern lights. What they did not know before the opening associated with mercury is the fact that this relationship is so turbulent. The inhabitants of the Earth, however, do not worry. Despite the fact that such events occur every eight minutes, the atmosphere of our planet is so thick, that protects us from deadly streams of cosmic radiation.

In the stones are жизнь



Surely, even in the desert or deep cave, a man once felt as if he is in this place not one. And indeed it is. The fact is that within a seemingly ordinary stones can boil a stormy life. They can live very tiny creatures, called "andalite". Endolite belong to the group of extremophiles. In other words, they like to live in extreme conditions. They were found at a depth of almost 3 kilometers underground. Most of andalites can do without food and water, which can fall in the rocky fissures. However, some types of andalites eat stones. To do this, they release acid, which dissolves their future rocky Breakfast.

As you know, one of the limiting factors of how deeply life can penetrate inside our planet is the temperature. Than to penetrate deeper into the Earth, the hotter it becomes the environment. So, at a depth of 5 kilometers, the temperature rises to 125 degrees Celsius. While none of the scientists failed to get so deep, but the study of extremophiles living in hot springs, showed that at their location in areas that have similar temperature extremophiles have problems with their reproductive functions. In other words, it is highly likely that 5 miles is the absolute maximum.

Since the discovery of andalites astrobiology conduct underground experiments aimed at identifying the possible existence of life in space. Because as we all know, also extreme conditions.

Level of Switzerland on the map of heights of rises and falls almost 25 centimeters every день



Earth, it turns out that not only is an attractive place for many types of living organisms. The fact that the surface of our planet is highly elastic. For this reason, the volcano Mauna Loa in the Pacific pushing surface for a few kilometres.

Such elasticity can also say that the Moon and Sun can affect the surface just as they affect the water, though not as pronounced. Watch the tides for us is easy. It is much harder to observe huge areas of the surface of our Earth begin to rise, then fall back — this happens very slowly. I think this rule only applies to plains and places where there are enormous volcanoes and mountains? You are wrong. In comparison with the power of the Sun and moon, even the Alps are powerless.

Very thorough research and measurements have shown that all of Switzerland every day it rises, then descends to Terra firma approximately 25 centimeters.

Cyclones can "dance"



Tornadoes are sometimes called cyclones, but from a technical point of view cyclones is huge vortices (diameter can reach tens of thousands of kilometers) low in the center of air pressure where the air circulates counterclockwise in the Northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern. The cyclones can outgrow any hurricanes and jet streams at low pressure.

Japanese meteorologist, Sakuhei Fujiwara was the first who discovered that the convergence of two cyclones and they begin to whirl or to dance around the center of the convergence. This observation is called the Fujiwara effect. Occur this effect can only be the case if the power of both cyclones are relatively equal, otherwise, a larger cyclone just swallow the smaller ones.

In 2012, the world witnessed a very devastating from all points of view, example of this phenomenon. Most hurricanes in the Caribbean sea and the Atlantic ocean eventually picked up by Western winds, which drive away the storms from North America. To what extent was the case with hurricane sandy. However, he suddenly changed direction and returned to the U.S. and Canada and due to high concentration of low pressure in its vicinity turned into a heavy duty cyclone. His wind streams began to rotate in the same direction, which caused the appearance of the effect of Fujiwara, which made the Caribbean a hurricane to come back. Due to the fact that sandy was large in size, the two storms merged into one superstorm, right over land, which was the worst variant of development of such events.

Giant earthquakes occur slowly and almost незаметно



Earthquakes occur due to movement of rocks along faults. These faults can be local (in this case, the earthquake is likely, too, it will be just local) and large scale — between two tectonic plates. The result of this movement, there is a huge amount of energy in the form of elastic strain of rocks, and when this voltage reaches a critical point, there is a sharp break and displacement of these species, which in turn causes wave oscillations of the earth's surface.

Before many large earthquakes occur preliminary tremors, but scientists were surprised to find that the friction between the rock may occur and even without any tremors. To find out they succeeded after the installation of sensitive equipment along the fault the San Andreas fault in California (fault between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates), and Alpine fault, where in the past there was a very large earthquake, but the Central point of which was always surprisingly quiet.

Scientists began to closely monitor this region, and he first suggested that there continues to accumulate potentially catastrophic for the entire region. But instead, they found seismic vibrations — a series of barely noticeable (but very long compared to regular earthquakes) the so-called creeping earthquakes (very slow displacement at break), lasting up to 30 minutes each.

Something similar was discovered in some parts of the fault the San Andreas fault. Scientists still are not sure what accounts for these fluctuations. Perhaps as a result of their builds up stress for future earthquakes, or Vice versa, as a result of such subtle tremors is the release of excess energy, which then reduce the intensity of earthquakes that may occur in the future as a result of further displacement of the plates.

Next eruption SUPERVOLCANO, likely will not be associated with Йеллоустоном



Yellowstone Park is a very attractive place for tourists. Geysers, hot springs, boiling mud pots very interesting for nature lovers. But the peak of the popularity of these places was the turn of the 21st century, when geologists found that in the world there are so-called supervolcanoes and the Yellowstone volcano is one such. From that moment many started to wonder when will it erupt. But it turns out that this is unlikely to happen at some point in time, at least within the framework of human civilization. Recent studies have shown that despite the fact that the volcano contains a really huge amount of magma it contains is not in the eruptive form (to erupt can't).

In the history of man has never witnessed the eruption of the volcano, so no one still knows what will be the signs of this eruption. It is highly likely that before the main eruption will occur a series of earthquakes and other destructive natural phenomena. In the end, ordinary volcanoes can erupt quite suddenly, therefore one does not negate the possibility that supervolcanoes are capable of doing such an unpleasant and unexpected surprises.

Perhaps one of the most interesting candidates on eruption may be the Chilean volcano Laguna del Maule, although currently no signs of an eruption it does not show. The only thing that is strange, mysterious and, therefore, of interest to scholars is the fact that this volcano increases in size by about 24-28 inches per year. And no one knows why.

Laguna del Maule located on the Argentine border and the size is approximately equal to the volcano is long valley, which is located in California. During the last 20 000 years there were at least 36 mini-eruptions of this volcano. The scientists who conducted the study say they found in it a sufficient number of eruptive magma that this volcano could obtain at least a classification of VEI 6 (measure of the strength of the eruption). This level cannot be called supervolcanoes (he is more equal to the level of the eruption of the Philippine volcano Pinatubo occurred in 1991), but scientists are still not sure whether all this magma that this volcano is hiding.

Source: hi-news.ru