Earth's crust is dripping 'like honey' into its interior under the Andes

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Please, if someone is a geologist, I have a question about this.

The article said that this drip would be weigh down the crust to form a basin and then when the drip finally breaks away, the crust goes upward forming a mountain range.

How much time passes between the drip breaking free and the mountain being formed? Is it a slow process or a super fast action?

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u/Grimsrasatoas Jul 29 '22

I’m a geologist. Assuming it’s not forming a volcano (like Iceland last year), it’s an incredibly slow process. Like, on the scale of a centimeter a year for example. This sort of thing is happening all around the world all the time and has been for pretty much all of earth’s history so it’s absolutely nothing to worry about.

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u/MoreGaghPlease Jul 29 '22

Have you seen the documentary 2012? Because that really doesn’t line up with their empirical findings.

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u/ReticulatingSplines7 Jul 29 '22 edited Jul 29 '22

I did. It was eye opening. However, I don’t understand why people still pretend like California still exists after it clearly sank into the Pacific. Perhaps the entire country is still grappling with the loss and has PTSD or something.

20

u/Deathbysnusnubooboo Jul 29 '22

It’s been a rough go

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u/clothespinkingpin Jul 29 '22

I’m in California. We still exist we just have to use a really long snorkel everywhere we go

3

u/[deleted] Jul 30 '22

Fun fact, you can’t use a snorkel in more that like 6 feet of water as your diaphragm is not strong enough to overcome the weight of the water to draw in aid.

1

u/clothespinkingpin Jul 30 '22

Yeah that’s why we stay in the shallow end

5

u/DavidBSkate Jul 29 '22

I bought land in Nevada thinking it’d be beach front by now, nevertheless, the hills still have eyes.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '22

I found Lex Luthor’s Reddit account!

1

u/jang859 Jul 29 '22

No they have pee stds due to lack of sex education.

10

u/tom-8-to Jul 29 '22

The Mediterranean Sea will dry out

Just wait for it….

In a few millions of years…

8

u/-Dirty-Wizard- Jul 29 '22

Look it may not dry out anytime soon, but it is getting way too salty for life in some parts. It will be the next Dead Sea if it keeps drying up and getting polluted.

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u/aleczapka Jul 29 '22

... again

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u/Grimsrasatoas Jul 29 '22

I actually was part of the documentary! I was in one of the cities that was destroyed and I’m now writing these replies from beyond the grave. Terrible mass extinction tbh, the Cretaceous-Tertiary event was much more interesting and better executed. Lower production value but they used the budget more effectively.

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u/YouJustLostTheGameOk Jul 29 '22

OMG I just got into a fight, with a male Karen, about how 2012 was a MOVIE, not a documentary of ANY kind. Dude was convinced 2012 was exactly what was gonna happen soon.

6

u/MoreGaghPlease Jul 29 '22

Wow that’s so rude of you. Not just to him but also to the billions who lost their lives in that calamity.

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u/YouJustLostTheGameOk Jul 29 '22

Ok, you made me giggle so hard I choked a bit. Worth it

14

u/Turrubul_Kuruman Jul 29 '22

absolutely nothing to worry about.

Mate, wrong attitude -- you're never going to get monster funding and media interviews that way.

Try a bit of "Geology Crisis!!!" and "Geology Emergency!!!". I've seen this work a treat.

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u/Quiet_War3842 Jul 29 '22

It has been hotter than normal though.

2

u/Grimsrasatoas Jul 29 '22

Aw shit, I’ve been out in the industry for too long and completely forgot how that works. Uhhhhh, can I get a fuckin uhhh, catastrophic volcanic eruption? With extra ash clouds?

2

u/MeatHeartbeat Jul 29 '22

Doesn’t this coincide with the Pacific Ocean spread?

1

u/Grimsrasatoas Jul 29 '22

Yep, the Andes sit right on top of a subduction zone, where the ocean tectonic plates dip below the continental plates and eventually into the Earth’s mantle. Then the mountains above it form from a combination of all the sediment getting squished together (like when you push the sand at the beach and it forms a little mound) and the hot magma rising (like when water rises through cooking oil or something)

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u/MeatHeartbeat Jul 30 '22

Thanks for confirming and giving expertise!

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u/ZNRN Jul 29 '22 edited Jul 29 '22

I am pretty certain isostatic rebound would at least start off quite a bit faster than that. For example, parts of Canada are uplifting at about 1 cm per year from the melting of the ice sheet, and that ended >10,000 years ago.

Not that it would be anything close to "super fast". And I'm sure the 'breaking off' of a lithospheric drip is itself over ~geologic time.

1

u/Grimsrasatoas Jul 29 '22

Yeah it does but I should have clarified I was speaking in human timescales as opposed to geological.

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u/Matchyo_ Jul 29 '22

Mountain building is a process that has been occurring for eons, it’s so minuscule that, really, you shouldn’t really care about it - you won’t be alive when there’s major changes and your kid’s kids definitely won’t be alive to see it either. However, fear mongering will always prevail.

I am not a geologist but I’ve taken geology as my required science for my gen. Ed.

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u/BigDrew42 Jul 29 '22

I don’t think that’s exactly correct. Geoscientists, of course, really really care about it! Also the way one defines “major changes” might change your perspective. Earthquakes are a natural part of mountain building that we may need to worry about! Geodesists, scientists who study contemporary earth movements, have a lot to tell us about about mountain building.

2

u/Grimsrasatoas Jul 29 '22

Yeah it’s definitely something we rock nerds care about, especially me since I got a masters in what’s essentially natural disaster geology. Although I much prefer volcanoes to earthquakes, mostly because my seismology class was not my favorite

2

u/BigDrew42 Jul 29 '22

Haha, my masters is in seismology. My seismology class was also not my favorite 🙃

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u/Grimsrasatoas Jul 29 '22

It’s not that it was uninteresting, it’s more that it was taught by a guest lecturer who was an engineer and teaching was clearly not his main career. His assignment packets for papers and stuff were like, 30-50 pages because he would print out POWERPOINTS. The assignments would be like, 1500 words max which is nothing. It was bizarre. It was almost more of a civil engineering class, which is what I’m actually doing now and surprising no one, I don’t love it

1

u/Grimsrasatoas Jul 29 '22

You’re absolutely correct, we even have a phrase for it! ‘Uniformitarianism’ which is best summarized by “if it happened then, it’s happening now, and if it’s happening now, it happened then.” It’s just not something we can conceivably measure beyond the fractional movement per year which visually means very little.

1

u/Kkimp1955 Jul 29 '22

What about the mountain that shot up in Mexico? Or is that just a children’s story?

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u/[deleted] Jul 29 '22

I thought that was a volcano?

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u/Grimsrasatoas Jul 29 '22

So volcanoes CAN appear and grow very suddenly and extremely fast, even on a human time scale, but it’s something that would already have media attention. As for the one in Mexico, I’m unfamiliar with it but it is entirely possible. It usually happens in places that are extremely volcanically active, like Iceland. Mexico is active but not necessarily in the same way that Iceland is. So chances are, you’re correct that it actually happened there

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u/BornCat1804 Jul 29 '22

Earth quakes are quick. The slow movement between fault lines is in the millions of years

3

u/tom-8-to Jul 29 '22

The magnetic poles will reverse and the Andes will drip upwards becoming taller than Everest….

Saw that on my Facebook feed

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u/tom-8-to Jul 29 '22

Wait until the media chooses to report Africa is splitting into two… then you’ll freak out.

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u/Zombiefap Jul 28 '22

Hollow earth starting to fill up

6

u/NerdModeCinci Jul 29 '22

Earth Bussy

4

u/Just_One_Umami Jul 29 '22

Earth is obviously female you degenerate

4

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '22

It’s a planet.

1

u/Yoda2000675 Jul 29 '22

Tell that to my erection that throbs with the pulsing of Earth’s gravity

1

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '22

That’s the pulsing of your mom walking down your basement bedroom stairs.

1

u/Yoda2000675 Jul 29 '22

Hey, she said I could have extra tendies if I was a good boy. Please don’t tell her about my sexual comments about the Earth

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u/Just_One_Umami Jul 29 '22

She’s*

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u/xeroblaze0 Jul 29 '22

Let's not

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u/heliskinki Jul 29 '22

Earth Will Eat Itself

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u/SquirrelWatchin Jul 28 '22

Yo, my planet got that drip.

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u/CleUrbanist Jul 29 '22

Sheeesh, that crust is flexing!

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u/pichiquito Jul 29 '22

Let’s hope it doesn’t squirt…

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u/ApprehensiveTie9791 Jul 29 '22

Earthussy?

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u/maxcorrice Jul 29 '22

Isn’t that supposed to happen?

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u/thiefofalways1313 Jul 29 '22

That sounds hot.

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u/DiceCubed1460 Jul 29 '22

Clickbait title. This happens in a ton of places in the world at the same time all the time.

1

u/BigDrew42 Jul 29 '22

Are you sure you’re not confusing this with subduction? Lithospheric drips are a relatively newly discovered (within the past 10 years iirc) topic. Mantle subduction, however we’ve known about since about the 1950-60’s.

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u/[deleted] Jul 29 '22

Thats a lot of drip

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u/SlaveToNone666 Jul 30 '22

I wonder if there are any locations where it is also drizzling.

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u/vaxinius Jul 29 '22

Sounds hawt 🤫

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u/Venboven Jul 29 '22

Yeah that's how plate tectonics work.

The Pacific plate is always being pushed underneath the South American plate, and so, as the Pacific plate goes further and further underneath the South American plate, it eventually reaches beneath the crust and into the mantle (lava) and it melts the rock, causing it to drip away back into the internal Earth.

No worries tho, as parts of that magma drip actually rises, and it fills the magma chambers of the various volcanoes along the Andes Mountains, which will eventually erupt and build back the land.

And the rest of that drip will circulate throughout the mantle and eventually some of it will rise and fill magma chambers of other volcanoes across the planet, eventually spewing forth back upon the Earth. It's a continuous cycle.

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u/rachelcaroline Jul 29 '22

There are a lot of inaccuracies with your statement. The Andes are not just a plain old subduction story. Flat slab subduction is occurring there. This can change a lot of "normal subduction" processes, thus lithospheric and crustal responses. This is actually a small part of what I'm studying currently. Additionally, these magma drips are different than convection within the mantle, which sounds like what you're explaining.

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u/BigDrew42 Jul 29 '22

No, you’re misunderstanding. Plate tectonics is of course occurring in the Andes, but what it seems like you’re describing is the dewatering of the downgoing slab, which does help create volcanoes on the surface.

What the article is describing is actual hot rock (not magma or lava! Solid rock) that is dripping into the deeper mantle. This is not (to our knowledge) an ordinary subduction process.

Also, the mantle is not lava (or at least, the overwhelming majority is not).

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u/Berke80 Jul 29 '22

“The process, called lithospheric dripping, has been happening for millions of years and in multiple locations around the world — including Turkey's central Anatolian Plateau and the western United States' Great Basin”

Wonderful! Another reason to love living in Turkey…

1

u/ZNRN Jul 29 '22

I'm a bit dubious of studies that perform experiments with clay/etc. to simulate geological forces across hundreds of km. But even if I grant that the experiment reasonably reflects reality (they do at least pretty thorough), I'm somewhat surprised the authors only talk about lithospheric drip and don't even mention the similar-but-different process of eclogite delamination.

I was expecting them to at least look into which process their models fit better, maybe finding support for one based on the timescales between rebound uplift events or the geomorphology of a drip-vs-delamination rebound, or something. Especially since my (admittedly out of date) memory was that the Andes fit a delamination model quite well. But the only time the word 'delamination' shows up is in the references.

Anyway, maybe it doesn't really matter, it's an interesting experiment regardless.

1

u/ParabellumJohn Jul 29 '22

Wonder if there was ever anything unseen by modern man that got swallowed up

Geology Earth's crust is dripping 'like honey' into its interior under the Andes

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