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7.8 Earthquake Rocks Nepal, Hundreds Dead
An anonymous reader writes: Nepal was struck by an earthquake of magnitude 7.8 today, with an epicenter 80 km east of the country's second biggest city, Pokhara. Its effects were also strongly felt in the capital, Kathmandu. Casualty reports conflict, but authorities have indicated at least 500 are dead and many more are feared to be trapped. Nepal has declared a state of emergency for the affected areas, and asked for international humanitarian assistance. India and Pakistan have both offered help. Some Indian cities were affected by the earthquake as well, and there are reports of avalanches on Mt. Everest, which has many climbers at any given time.
It's the Indian-Asian boundary. India is a subcontinent on its own tectonic plate which has been crushing into Asia for a long time. The place where the plates collide is in the Himalayas. Those mountains are still increasing in altitude because of that.
The Himalayas are there because they are on a plate boundary where one plate is colliding with another. At this one, instead of subduction, we have collision and uplift. And this uplift we happen to call the Himalayas.
I'm surprised that there aren't *more* earthquakes of high intensity there.