Everyone knows Mount Everest, but it’s nothing compared to what’s out there in our own Solar System.
Meet Olympus Mons on Mars, the tallest known volcano and mountain we’ve discovered. It stands about 22 km (13.6 miles) high, which is nearly 3 times the height of Everest. But that’s not even the craziest part.
Olympus Mons is so massive that its base is about 600 km (370 miles) wide. That’s roughly the size of an entire country. If you were standing on its slopes, you probably wouldn’t even realize you were on a mountain, it rises so gradually that it feels like a slight incline.
Because Mars has lower gravity and no moving tectonic plates like Earth, the volcano just kept growing and growing over millions of years without collapsing or shifting.
It also has a giant caldera (collapsed crater) about 80 km wide.
by albusvercus
14 Comments
It doesn’t look like a hill, just a smaller mountain. Shitty clickbait title.
Is there a Flat Mars society yet
Mars: Hold my cosmos.
Wish I could teleport there to witness the view
One day it’ll be littered with the corpses of unprepared entitled tourists also.
It’s also the size of Arizona, and it’s so wide the the top of it would be beyond the horizon if you standing near the edge of it, which is kind of a mindfuck
Awesome 🙂
Those cliffs are probably an incredible sight from the ground.
>If you were standing on its slopes, you probably wouldn’t even realize you were on a mountain, it rises so gradually that it feels like a slight incline
It has some pretty steep cliffs surrounding the gentle incline, though!
The largest star in the galaxy makes smaller stars look like smaller stars!
In 100 years people will be taking trips there to climb it like the Appalachian trail
why haven’t we sent a robot there to take some pictures
What if this thing forming had something to do with the annihilation of a civilization. What if there are bones everywhere x feet below the surface
Since nobody has colonized Mars yet, I choose This Mountain as my property. Are you guys okay with this?