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In geology, unlike business, nothing is too big to fail.
地質學與商業不同，沒有什么東西能龐大到不會崩塌。
Mountains offer the most spectacular example.
山脈就是最壯觀的例子。
Pushed up by the crumpling of Earth’s crust following the collision of tectonic plates, they could in theory keep rising almost indefinitely.
在構造板塊碰撞后，由于地殼的擠壓，它們理論上幾乎可以無限期地上升。
In practice, they do not.
實際上，它們不能。
A suite of geological processes—including the grinding of glaciers, the gentle impact of rain, and forcible cracking by freezing and thawing of water—erode them down to size.
一系列的地質過程——包括冰川的磨蝕，雨水的溫和影響，以及水的凍融造成的強力破裂——都在侵蝕著它們的大小。
In a paper published in Nature Jerome Lave, a geologist at the University of Lorraine, describes another, much more spectacular mechanism.
在《自然》雜志上發表的一篇論文中，洛林大學的地質學家杰羅姆·拉維描述了另一種更為壯觀的機制。
Dr Lave has collected evidence suggesting that, in around 1190, an enormous landslide slashed perhaps 500 metres from the height of Annapurna IV, a mountain in the Himalayas that stands about 7,500 metres high today.
拉維博士收集的證據表明，大約在1190年，一場巨大的山體滑坡削減了安納普爾納四世山500米的高度，安納普爾納四世是喜馬拉雅山脈中的一座山，今天大約有7500米高。
If he is right, it would be one of the biggest landslips ever recorded.
如果他是對的，這將是有史以來最大的山體滑坡之一。
The falling mountain top would have displaced up to 27 cubic kilometres of rock—roughly enough to bury the entirety of Manhattan to about the height of the Empire State Building.
崩塌的山頂將移位多達27立方千米的巖石——大致足以將整個曼哈頓埋到帝國大廈的高度。
As the rubble crashed down, the energy released would have been equivalent to around six times that of the Tsar Bomba, the biggest nuclear weapon ever detonated.
當碎石墜落時，釋放的能量相當于沙皇炸彈的六倍，沙皇炸彈是有史以來引爆的最大的核武器。
“I don’t think I could imagine what it would sound like,” says Ann Rowan, a geologist at the University of Bergen who was not involved in Dr Lave’s work.
“我無法想象它聽起來是什么樣子，”安·羅文說，她是卑爾根大學的地質學家，沒有參與拉夫博士的工作。
Dr Lave’s suspicions were aroused while doing fieldwork in the Ganga plain in Nepal in 2012.
拉維博士的懷疑是在2012年在尼泊爾恒河平原進行實地考察時產生的。
He noticed that the ground beneath his feet had an unusual composition.
他注意到腳下的地面含有一種不同尋常的成分。
A 50-metre core drilled out of the rock showed an average concentration of limestone of around 10%.
從巖石中鉆出的50米巖心顯示，石灰巖的平均濃度約為10%。
But for one 4-metre stretch the concentration rose to nearly 50%, “which is enormous, and completely abnormal”, he says.
但在一段4米長的巖心中，濃度上升到近50%，“這含量相當多，完全不正?！?，他說。
This suggested that the rocks in question had made their way to the Ganga plain from the Annapurna massif, hundreds of kilometres away.
這表明，這些巖石是從數百公里外的安納普爾納山脈來到恒河平原的。
That, in turn, hinted at a massive landslide in the (geologically) recent past.
這轉而又暗示了(地質上)最近發生的一次大規?；?。
After examining satellite images of the massif, and taking a helicopter ride to have a look for himself, Dr Lave spotted a large rubble field which looked like it could have been caused by the same event.
在檢查了山體的衛星圖像，并乘坐直升機親自查看后，拉維博士發現了一大片碎石區，看起來可能是由同一滑坡造成的。
