The Hills Are Alive With the Flows of Physics
The New York Times
Landscapes around you may appear static, but research using lasers suggests even the most steady terrain is creeping along.
Mountains look solid. But that just might be a mirage. On extremely long time scales, natural landscapes are creeping and flowing like viscous streams. Until recently, most scientists would have said that things like burrowing animals, falling trees, earthquakes and lightning strikes were responsible for deforming much of the world’s terrain. But new experiments that involve shooting ultraprecision laser beams at sand piles instead suggest that creep is an inherent part of any environment and would occur even in the absence of all other action. “Everything is moving all the time,” said Nakul Deshpande, a geophysics doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s not just an analogy. It’s real, it’s what’s happening.”More Related News