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At 8,849 metres high, the tallest mountain on Earth, Mount Everest, is continuing to grow in height, and UCL scientists think they know why.
Over the last 89,000 years, Everest has grown by around 15-50 metres, but scientists say that the mountain is growing every year at around two millimetres - due to the mountain’s water system capturing a river.
Tech & Science Daily speak to co-author of the report, Adam Smith, from University College London.
Plus, the UK’s last remaining coal-fired power station closed on Monday.
Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station was Britain’s last remaining coal-fired power station, and this closure puts an end to the UK’s reliance of 142 years of fossil fuels being burned to produce electricity.
UCL’s Simon Lewis, professor of global change science, explains the significance of the closure.
Also in this episode:
- Why has musician Aurora performed a gig in the Arctic?
- Storm Helene: electric vehicle saltwater fire risk
- Pine martens return to the South West of England for the first time in more than a century
- Daniel Kaluuya to be recognised with statue in London's Leicester Square
You can find Tech & Science Daily on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you stream.
Here’s a fully automated transcript of today’s episode:
Hi, I'm Rachelle Abbott, and this is The Standard's Tech and Science Daily podcast.
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Coming up, the UK's last remaining coal-fired power station switches off.
But first, at 8,849 meters high, the tallest mountain on earth, Mount Everest, is continuing to grow in height, and UCL scientists think they know why.
Over the last 80,000 years, Everest has grown by around 15 to 50 meters.
But scientists say that the mountain is growing every year at as much as 2 millimetres, due to the mountain's water system capturing the river.
Yeah, so the Himalayas are a little bit strange in that rivers actually flow through them.
And so, the Arun River actually begins behind Everest to the north, and it flows east-west along the mountain range before turning quite abruptly to the south, and then flows north-south through a big gorge that cuts through lots of rock in the Himalayas.
And it's located about 75 kilometres to the east of Everest.
And normally mountain ranges will have what's called a main-central divide, where on one side of the divide, rivers flow in one direction, and on the other side of the divide, rivers flow in the opposite direction.
The highest mountains will form that divide, and Everest is the highest mountain in the world, and yet rivers are able to cut through and past it, and that's a little bit of a conundrum for scientists.
That's Adam Smith, co-author of the report from University College London.
Adam explains why the river system is causing Everest to ‘spring upwards’ due to the river network carving away at the Arran Gorge.
So, this was a project that I did with my supervisor, Matthew Fox, who led the project, and we worked in collaboration with scientists at the China University of Geosciences.
When you increase the volume of the water, the river becomes more erosive.
If you have more water flowing, you can erode more rock.
So when it captured the river, there was quite a dramatic event where you would increase the amount of water, and that led to a lot of erosion downstream, so the removal of rock from the river gorge.
When you remove rock, mountains float on the layer below them, which we call the mantle, and they float a bit like ships or icebergs.
And if you removed cargo or you remove the top of your iceberg, then you would see an increase in the elevation of your iceberg.
I guess the ship analogy is quite nice.
So, you can imagine it's a ship, and you throw the cargo off board, and the ship gets lighter, and it's uplifted relative to the sea level.
So, the sea level has dropped relative to the ship.
And the same thing happens with Everest.
So, we've removed this rock close by, near Everest.
What that's done is made it lighter and allowed it to uplift.
Adam says their new model can help as tightly constrain river erosion, and could be a powerful tool to identify similar river piracy events in other locations.
Adam's currently looking at the Green River and the Colorado River, which are rivers that form the Grand Canyon and have similar features to the Irwin River.
Next, the UK's last remaining coal-fired power station closed yesterday, Monday 30 September.
Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station was Britain's last remaining coal-fired power station, and this closure puts an end to the UK's reliance of 142 years of fossil fuels being burned to produce electricity.
Well, this is the moment when we stop using the dirtiest fossil fuel, coal, to produce electricity in this country.
It's a big moment.
The very first coal-fired power station in the world was in London back in 1882, and we've had enormous emissions from coal that's been powering the UK for many decades, and now we're out of it for the first time.
So, one of the first countries to get out of coal completely who had a big reliance on coal in the past.
Simon Lewis there, Professor of Global Chain Science at UCL, speaking to Mark Blunden on Monday's episode of The Standard podcast.
The power station has been generating electricity since 1968 via its four coal-fired boilers, eight vast cooling towers and 199-metre-tall chimney, which occupies a prominent spot in the East Midland skyline.
Now, electric vehicles that have been left behind during the evacuation of Storm Helene are being treated as a fire hazard due to saltwater flooding.
Officials urged owners of EVs, or golf carts left inside garages or under buildings to report them if they cannot safely remove them.
It's said saltwater can damage the battery components in the vehicles, potentially leading to dangerous chemical reactions that could cause the vehicle to catch fire.
At the time of this podcast being recorded, it's reported up to at least 125 people have lost their lives due to the catastrophic Category 4 storm.
Let's go to the ads.
Coming up in part 2, why has Norwegian artist Aurora performed between icebergs in the Arctic?
Plus, while I have you, the latest Sustainable Travel episode from The Standard Podcast is live.
Hosted by Juliet Kinsman and John Weeks, they're discussing why nature tourism can be such a life enhancing experience.
We'll pop a link in the podcast show notes.
See you back here in just a minute.
Welcome back.
The UK's Grammy Award winning Jacob Collier and Norwegian artist Aurora have performed between floating icebergs in the Arctic.
The singer-songwriters joined Greenpeace International on its expedition to call out for a global ban on deep sea mining and for governments to protect at least 30% of the world's oceans by 2030.
On a platform in front of a glacier in Svalbard, they sung a mash-up of Collier's 2024 track in Rock Somewhere and Aurora's The Seed.
It comes as the Norwegian government are planning to allow commercial mining operations in the Arctic for seabed minerals that are used in technology such as batteries and electronics.
Next,
[CLIP]
…The sound of pine martens, returning to the wild in the southwest of England for the first time in more than a century.
Pine martens, described by wildlife experts, are cat-sized tree-climbing members of the weasel family, and went extinct in the southwest due to a continued loss of woodland, as well as hunting and trapping.
This is the first phase of a project to re-establish them, led by Devon Wildlife Trust in partnership with Dartmoor National Park Authority, Exmoor National Park Authority, Forestry England, National Trust, Somerset Wildlife Trust, and Woodland Trust.
All 15 of the animals were fitted with a radio collar to track their movements in the coming months, before they drop off in around six to nine months' time.
And finally,
London-born actor and filmmaker, Daniel Kaluuya, is set to be immortalized in a new statue in the capitals, celebrating his performance in the 2017 psychological horror movie, Get Out.
The actor was chosen from a poll of 5,000 British film fans, as the actor people would most like to see recognized with a new statue in Leicester Square, winning one-fifth of the vote.
The statue is believed to be unveiled in October, and will depict the sunken place scene in Get Out, where the actor's character falls into a fugue state.
You're up to date, come back at 4 p.m. for The Standard podcast.
For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk.
Tech and Science Daily will be back tomorrow at 1 p.m.
See you then.
