> Earth mountains can never be as tall as Mons Olympus. >talkingphysics.wordpress.com/2011/09/08/how-high-can-mountains-be/ The absolute limit is when rock begins to crack under its own weight. Mars has only about 1/3rd of Earth's gravitation, so mountains can be 3 times taller there. In addition, Mars is desiccated. Water acts as a lubricant and weakens rocks, allowing them to slip. Oklahoma started experiencing daily earthquakes when oil companies began injected water into the ground to "frack". Finally, Earth has weather which wears away even rock in time.
Mons Olympus got so large because Mars' crust is rigid. It doesn't have moving continental plates. On Earth, the Hawaiian islands formed one-after-another as the crust moved over an underlying "hot spot". On Mars, Mons Olympus stayed in place over such a spot indefinitely.
Kevin Adams
I meant farthest from the Earth's core.
Jackson White
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James Price
>"hehe I repeat le epic big bong theroy maymay I em so smaret"
Angel Stewart
That's not Everest, that's Chimborazo.
Jaxon Martinez
I'm a geologist but this is by no means my area. Yes there is a limit. When mountains get too high they just compact the mantle more. Weathering takes care of the rest. How high is that? That's a great question with lots of debate in current geology.
As an example, the Appalachian mountains are some 480 million years old. The orogenic event which created it built a very tall mountain range but equally pushed a great deal of material down thickening the crust. As the top weathered down the lighter thicker crust gets pushed up by buoyant forces in the mantle to be weathered more. It's a process that's gone on for over 400 million years.
Both of them are still in their infancy and both are fraught with problems. Oxygen isotopes are also influenced by regional weather and leaves are poor indicators in extreme high altitudes when you get above plant lines. So all our estimates are based on assumptions that get argued about endlessly.
So tl:dr your guess is about as good as anyone's.
Josiah Green
Is there not a geophysical way to figure this out in theory? Like I feel like there should be one good estimate or a small range.
Easton Bennett
Oh, my hasty internet search didn't get me what I was looking for but some other article about leaf mass and altitude. Well, it's similar. Leaves change shape as they go higher in altitude and that's been used to measure paleo altimetry as well
William Rivera
Geologists are cool as shit.
Aiden Rivera
Oh sure. We use computer models for this, the accuracy is debated but it can give you estimates. As I said it's outside my area, the best I can do is internet searches open to anyone.
