Why Is Everest Still Getting Taller?

Mount Everest is still getting taller, and the rock at its summit was once the floor of a warm tropical sea. How did 465-million-year-old seabed end up 29,000 feet in the air, and why is it still rising? #Everest #Geology #Himalayas Subscribe for more deep Earth stories:    / @deepearthofficial   In 1924 the geologist Noel Odell found the first fossils on Everest in the same minute he last saw Mallory and Irvine alive. A century later we know the summit is Ordovician limestone full of broken trilobites, sea lilies and ostracods, born south of the equator and carried north by India's sprint across a dying ocean. GPS says the mountain is still rising by roughly 2 mm a year. In 2024 one team proposed a surprising second reason; in July 2026 another team challenged it in print. Both sides are here, and so is the answer to where Everest's rock is going. Chapters 0:00 The highest rock on Earth 1:40 The black spot moved 5:20 The rock from the top 8:33 The ocean that had to die 12:10 The mountain you can't pin down 16:56 Can a river lift a mountain? 19:38 This summer, someone pushed back 21:00 Is there a ceiling? 21:51 Follow the rock Sources Sakai et al. 2005, Island Arc 14:297 (summit fossils) Myrow et al. 2009, GSA Bull. 121:323; Torsvik & Cocks 2009, JGS 166:679 Han et al. 2024, Nature Geoscience 17:1031 (river piracy) Leonard & Whipple 2026, Nat. Geosci. 19:1011, "Himalayan rivers reflect rainfall patterns, not river piracy"; authors' reply, Han et al. 2026, Nat. Geosci. 19:1014 Kumar et al. 2007, Nature 449:894; van Hinsbergen et al. 2012, PNAS; Bilham et al. 1997, Nature 386:61 Egholm et al. 2009, Nature 460:884; Raymo & Ruddiman 1992, Nature 359:117 Elliott et al. 2016, Nat. Geosci.; Galetzka et al. 2015, Science (Gorkha 2015) Wager 1933, Nature 132:28; Odell's dispatch, The Times, 5 Jul 1924 Washburn (American Alpine Club) and Gulatee (Himalayan Journal 17) on the 1849-52 survey Nepal-China joint survey, 8 Dec 2020: 8,848.86 m Notes: the ~2 mm/yr rise comes from a regional GNSS model (about +/-1 mm). In Han et al. the river's share is 0.16-0.53 mm/yr, and that is the contested part. 29,002 ft was the plain average of six sightings. The summit fossils are fragments; fossil images show similar Ordovician material from elsewhere. Data and imagery: Google Earth (Google Earth Studio); NASA Blue Marble; Esri World Imagery; ISS footage NASA JSC; plate model Merdith et al. 2021, Earth-Sci. Rev. 214:103477, CC BY 4.0; AWS Terrain Tiles (SRTM); Copernicus DEM GLO-30 (c) DLR e.V. 2010-2014 and (c) Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014-2018, provided under COPERNICUS by the EU and ESA; GMRT (Ryan et al. 2009), CC BY 4.0; NOAA ETOPO1; MOLA (NASA/JPL/GSFC); Natural Earth; HydroSHEDS (Lehner & Grill 2013); Nevada Geodetic Laboratory Photos via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0: James St. John, Ben Tubby. CC BY 3.0: Sergey Pashko. CC BY 4.0: ErikAbner. CC BY-SA 2.5: Luca Galuzzi. CC BY-SA 3.0: Lloyd Smith, Superikonoskop, Andrewrabbott, Dolores Coullie. CC BY-SA 4.0: Nirmal Dulal, Vinay Bhat, Goutam1962, Michael C. Rygel. CC0: Tom Patterson, Dexter Perkins, Daderot, JGBlue1509, Alfred Wegener. Public domain: NASA (incl. Dan Bursch, Seddon), Survey of India, George Mallory, The Epic of Mount Everest (1926), Agence Rol/BnF Gallica, Nationaal Archief, A. M. Heron, C. J. Morris, Maull & Polyblank, Achton Friis, Ocrambo, zzjlamb, The Modern Review (1941), unknown photographers Stock footage via Pexels: Ahmed, Alex Kad, Amit Gupta, Anil Prasad Shrestha, Arijit Dey, Asif Khan, Atahan Demir, Bibek Bohara, Bruce Hep, Chandra Man Dongol, changen chan, chuan wang, Cristian Manieri, David Pickup, Eclipse Chasers, Elements Interactive, emirkhan bal, Ex Route Adventures, Ezmari Nabizadeh, Fernando Sánchez Aranguren, Film Composite, Florian Delée, Giuseppe Paoletti, Huey Freeman, Jabriel, Joel Leger, JUN HO LEE, K, Kindel Media, Kishan Sharma, Major & Wang, Marek Piwnicki, Nepal in Frame, Nishess Shakya, Peter Smit, Prabesh Rai, Rohan Shah, Samar Layek, Sang Wong, Sergey Guk, Somogro Bangladesh, Vikash Singh Stock footage via Pixabay: adege, Ambient_Nature_Atmosphere, DancingSky, flutie8211, Gylfi, Hoangbuifilms, Jackdrafahl, Tiems, 书生李尔基 Music: Vaughan Williams, Tallis Fantasia (US Army Band); Grieg, Holberg Suite (US Marine Chamber Orchestra); Elgar, Serenade for Strings (US Army Strings): public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Mahler, Adagietto (Peabody Symphony Orchestra), CC0. Tchaikovsky, Andante cantabile, New York Classical Players (Madeline Fayette, cello), CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Additional score: Meta MusicGen. Sound effects (SoundBible, CC BY 3.0): "Camera Shutter Click", "Waterfall" (Mike Koenig); "Wind", "Blop" (Mark DiAngelo); "Tick" (DeepFrozenApps). Ice: Marius Paulikas, radio aporee, public domain. Dramatic hits recorded for the channel.