Strange Science Question

[Rainbow*Stylin]

As we all know we have been taking stuff our of earth forever, granted our tempo for doing so has increased over recent years with improved technology, increased demand etc... now I know in Utah there are some pretty decrepit looking mountains from a copper mine, and what with this oil spill and shit it got me thinking, what fills the spaces of what we take from the earth. I know in utah the mountains I was talking about are sort of collapsing in upon themselves, looking almost skeletal in comparison, so it seems that when taking things from mountains it makes them smaller, obvi... my question more likes in what happens when we take stuff from other areas, does it fill with gases or hot magma? I know this really isn't a forum for smart appropriate responses but whatever, just wondering if you had some thoughts on the issue

 

[treebeard]

ever seen the inside of a really old mine? over time it collapses on itself, and thus fills itself. the mountains get smaller.

i suppose they could start growing again over millions of years, but they'll never get completely filled in again

 

[Tasche]

It collapses over time. If you take oil out of the ground there is some collapse, the LA basin has collapsed several feet over time. Oil is in rocks, it is not in a cavern.

 

[yellav]

the mountains will turn into sediment through different forms of weathering, mass wasting and erosion and that sediment will most likely become collected in some sort of basin somewhere and compact, cement, and undergo lithification and turn into beds of sedimentary rock. that happening over millions of years of course. although a lot of places in utah where mountains are at the plate boundaries are still converging therefore there's still uplift going on and mountains will still generally get bigger.

note: this is all knowledge drawn from an introductory geology course so i could be completely wrong.

 

[chapz]

as years, millions of them, go on, the earth evolves and changes drastically. in the future, the mountains in utah and allover the west coast will no longer exist. for example, the laurentian mountains (north of montreal), used to be as high as the rockies. through time, with the help of erosion, glacier weight and other factors, things shrink (or grow if theyre on a plate boundary).

we might be destroying our earth but in the end, it is capable of recovering, it just takes a long time.

on another note, all the carbon we're taking isn't just disappearing. the problem is, when we take carbon sediment from continental shelves, we're taking inactive carbon and making it active again. there is a certain balance the earth has, and unfortunately, we're making too much carbon active again which is helping with global problems. (insert global warming statement here)

one last thing.

in a diverging area such as an oceanic ridge, the farther away the region gets from the ridge, the colder it gets which makes it more dense. therefore, it becomes heavier and forces itself towards the earth core.