The Himalayan mountain belt was produced when two continental plates collided. Continental crust is mostly composed of granite, which is formed under a high degree of melting. For a long time it wasn’t known why the granite in the Himalayas could have produced enough heat to melt the crust. Alan Whittington, a geologist at the University of Missouri at Columbia and his colleagues has found a possible answer. They experimented with three types of continental crust to see how fast heat would move though them. The results were that cooler rocks loose heat faster. Hotter rocks hold heat inside longer because they are less efficient to cooling down. This means that the heat needed to melt continental crust does not have to be constant.
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