Wind can keep mountains from growing

University of Arizona ^ | March 28, 2011 | Unknown

[decimon]

Caption: This map shows Central Asia's Qaidam Basin, Gobi Desert and Loess Plateau. A research team led by University of Arizona geoscientist Paul Kapp suggests that during glacial times, winds blew dust from the Qaidam Basin to the Loess Plateau and deposited more than half of the dust currently in the Loess Plateau. During interglacial times such as the present, the westerly winds shift north and blow dust from the Gobi Desert to the Loess Plateau.

Credit: Paul Kapp, University of Arizona.

Usage Restrictions: This photo may be used only to illustrate a story about the research described in the accompanying release, Wind Can Keep Mountains from Growing. The photo credit must be included with the image.

[decimon]

Winding down ping.

[hinckley buzzard]

Major location of loess hills in America are in Northwest Iowa.

[flat]

PFFFFFFT it was climate change caused by the smoke from mongol campfires......

[JoeProBono]

[mewykwistmas]

“He and his colleagues estimate wind can be 10 to 100 times more “

I estimate it to be 10 to 10,000 times.

[UCANSEE2]

In the ‘olden’ days , we used to call this ‘sandblasting’.

Odd how such areas as the one in the article (and some others I can think of) are so near a desert.

[JimSEA]

Really interesting. I went on Google Earth and will go back but the article does seem to relate to some of what you see.

[piasa]

Illinois is covered with the stuff. It has some neat properties in that you can make a vertical cut through it and it doesn’t slump down as sand would.

[UCANSEE2]

Source

[UCANSEE2]

What that picture brings to mind is that, long ago, where that man is standing would have been several hundred feet under the BOTTOM of the Ocean.

[BBell]

"No one had ever thought that wind could be this effective," said Kapp, a UA associate professor of geosciences. "You won't read in a textbook that wind is a major process in terms of breaking down rock material."

That's odd. I learned as a child that wind erosion was a major factor in shaping rocks and land topography.

[RatRipper]

I believe it. Came off a ski lift on the top of the mountain at Tahoe a few weeks ago and felt like my face was being sandblasted. Got down the hill fast as I could. I can only imagine what a million years of that could do to solid rock.

[I Buried My Guns]

From a movie, and thus my memory:

"How long is eternity? Imagine the tallest mountains known, made of the hardest rock.

Now imagine a scarf of the finest silk brushing against those mountains every day.

When those mountains have been reduced to dust by that scarf, that is the beginning of eternity."

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks decimon.

I immediately thought of one of Doctor Evil's lines. Ends with "ridiculous". This also reminds me of the remarkably stupid claim that the sub-3 million year old beech tree fossils on Antarctica were carried there by the winds. Or for that matter, Aristotle moronicaly claiming that rocks don't fall from the sky, that meteorites that the hicks and hillbillies of ancient Greece witnessed falling from the sky had been carried by the winds from elsewhere. And of course, this:

Earth throws a wobbly
Tuesday, 18 July, 2000
web archive version

The Chandler Wobble, a mysterious wobble that shakes the Earth as it spins on its axis, was first detected in 1891 by an American astronomer called Seth Carlo Chandler. The force of the wobble is such that it is capable of moving the North Pole about six metres (20 feet) from where it should be and lasts around 433 days, or just 1.2 years. Scientists originally calculated that this phenomenon should naturally run out of steam after 68 years unless some force keeps activating it. And this is precisely what appears to happen. NASA's Richard Gross says the principle causes of the wobble are fluctuating pressures on the bottom of the oceans, the result of changes in temperature, salinity and wind patterns. Dr Michael Tsimplis, from the Southampton Oceanography Centre, UK, says that the Gross theory is plausible. "Any stress you apply to the surface of the Earth can affect its axis," he said.

But not a close encounter with another celestial body, nope, never.

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[decimon]

...Aristotle moronicaly claiming that rocks don't fall from the sky...

That was Aristotle Onassis telling Jackie she couldn't have another diamond.

[SunkenCiv]

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[Bernard Marx]

That's odd. I learned as a child that wind erosion was a major factor in shaping rocks and land topography.

I guess my 1950s college geology professors were far ahead of their time. I learned about the tremendous erosional power of wind back then, in the "olden days."

[Fiddlstix]

......I learned about the tremendous erosional power of wind back then, in the "olden days."

Ditto.
I learned about wind erosion in general science class back in the day.......
Also by hearing stories about the "dust bowl" from my parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts and other "older" folk.

I reckon people back in the 30' - 40's were far ahead of their time.

[beebuster2000]

so answer this smart guy:

how come my butt isnt smaller?