Curious Nature - Mount Everest

There are facts about the Earth that we have not always questioned, but which several scientists have studied or are still researching about.

Much of what was thought to be a mystery a few decades or centuries ago, has become fully known to the experts, who share their knowledge about some factors involving terrestrial demography, climate, natural phenomena, and many other things.

Check out some curiosities about nature that you may not know:

• Mount Everest swings sideways and not upwards

Fifty million years ago, the Indian subcontinent decided that it did not like the neighborhood to the south of Ecuador and it was sent to the north. It eventually collided with Asia, creating the Himalayas (including Mount Everest) during the process.

Today, with its almost nine thousand meters high, Everest is the highest mountain on Earth, which is above sea level. Counting on the fact that the India-Asia collision is still ongoing, would it be fair to say that Everest continues to "grow"?

According to the scientists, no. They say they have meticulously measured the height of the mountain. Giorgio Poretti, a professor at the University of Trieste, concluded in 1995 that Mount Everest is not rising at a significant rate.

Instead, the researcher noted that the ongoing continental collision between India and Asia is actually moving Everest in a northeasterly direction at a speed of 42 millimeters per year.

On that basis, if a person climbs roughly the same number of yards as Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay did in 1953, she will be completing this route about three meters northeast of where they reached their record. Crazy, is not it?