Electrocution: New Way to Erode Mountains

[xchrom]

http://www.livescience.com/40701-lightning-strikes-erode-mountains.html

Boom, zap, pow! Who needs superheroes to move mountains, when lighting does the job just fine?

Powerful explosions sparked by lightning create piles of angular, jumbled rocks atop mountain summits, a new study shows. The frequent blasts break down high peaks more quickly than frost-shattering — when freezing water wedges apart fractured rock.

In Lesotho's Drakensberg mountains, a single lightning bolt can blow out 100 to 350 cubic feet (3 to 10 cubic meters) of bedrock, said Jasper Knight, lead study author and a geomorphologist at Wits University in South Africa. The sheer volume of summer lightning strikes atop high peaks, combined with their massive erosive power, means electric blasts are a long-overlooked force in bringing down mountains, Knight and his co-author conclude.

"Lightning is very significant in causing landscape erosion and the formation of lots of fractured bedrock," Knight told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet. "What I think this project does, in highlighting the role of lightning, is go some way toward overturning a very entrenched and long-held paradigm of how many continental scale landscapes have evolved." [Electric Earth: Stunning Images of Lightning]

[intaglio]

1. Like spark erosion but on a much bigger scale

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_discharge_machining

[pscot]

2. All true paths lead through mountains

Which is why the forces of evil go around blowing their tops off. The coal companies must be salivating over this discovery.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. So ... lightning never strikes in the same place twice ...

because once it strikes, that place isn't there anymore.

[hunter]

4. My only attempt to climb Mt. Whitney was halted by wicked thunderstorms.

In hindsight, it's pretty obvious that lightning would accelerate erosion.

It's excellent that someone has thought to measure it!

There is plenty of science waiting to be done... all you have to do is keep your eyes open for it.