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In geology, unlike business, nothing is too big to fail.
地质学与商业不同，没有什么东西能庞大到不会崩塌。
Mountains offer the most spectacular example.
山脉就是最壮观的例子。
Pushed up by the crumpling of Earth’s crust following the collision of tectonic plates, they could in theory keep rising almost indefinitely.
在构造板块碰撞后，由于地壳的挤压，它们理论上几乎可以无限期地上升。
In practice, they do not.
实际上，它们不能。
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.
一系列的地质过程——包括冰川的磨蚀，雨水的温和影响，以及水的冻融造成的强力破裂——都在侵蚀着它们的大小。
In a paper published in Nature Jerome Lave, a geologist at the University of Lorraine, describes another, much more spectacular mechanism.
在《自然》杂志上发表的一篇论文中，洛林大学的地质学家杰罗姆·拉维描述了另一种更为壮观的机制。
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.
拉维博士收集的证据表明，大约在1190年，一场巨大的山体滑坡削减了安纳普尔纳四世山500米的高度，安纳普尔纳四世是喜马拉雅山脉中的一座山，今天大约有7500米高。
If he is right, it would be one of the biggest landslips ever recorded.
如果他是对的，这将是有史以来最大的山体滑坡之一。
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.
崩塌的山顶将移位多达27立方千米的岩石——大致足以将整个曼哈顿埋到帝国大厦的高度。
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.
当碎石坠落时，释放的能量相当于沙皇炸弹的六倍，沙皇炸弹是有史以来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.
“我无法想象它听起来是什么样子，”安·罗文说，她是卑尔根大学的地质学家，没有参与拉夫博士的工作。
Dr Lave’s suspicions were aroused while doing fieldwork in the Ganga plain in Nepal in 2012.
拉维博士的怀疑是在2012年在尼泊尔恒河平原进行实地考察时产生的。
He noticed that the ground beneath his feet had an unusual composition.
他注意到脚下的地面含有一种不同寻常的成分。
A 50-metre core drilled out of the rock showed an average concentration of limestone of around 10%.
从岩石中钻出的50米岩心显示，石灰岩的平均浓度约为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米长的岩心中，浓度上升到近50%，“这含量相当多，完全不正常”，他说。
This suggested that the rocks in question had made their way to the Ganga plain from the Annapurna massif, hundreds of kilometres away.
这表明，这些岩石是从数百公里外的安纳普尔纳山脉来到恒河平原的。
That, in turn, hinted at a massive landslide in the (geologically) recent past.
这转而又暗示了(地质上)最近发生的一次大规模滑坡。
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.
在检查了山体的卫星图像，并乘坐直升机亲自查看后，拉维博士发现了一大片碎石区，看起来可能是由同一滑坡造成的。
