What's the Tallest Mountain in the Solar System?

Even though Earth is the largest rocky body in our solar system, we don't have the largest mountain -- not by a long shot. Learn how Mars took the title in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/tallest-mountain-in-solar-system.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here there's a thrill like no
other to reaching the peak of a mountain and looking
down at the landscape below. And it turns out that
our highest mountains here on Earth are actually some of
the smallest in our Solar system. So what is the

(00:24):
tallest mountain in the Solar System? The answer, its location
and its monstrous size might surprise you. After all, there
aren't that many other rocky planets and moons in the
Solar System that are big enough to have a mountain
larger than ours. But the tallest mountain in the Solar
System is, in fact, Olympus Mons on Mars. This giant

(00:47):
stratovolcano rises sixteen miles that's over eighty four thousand feet
or twenty five kilometers above the surface of the red planet.
It's one of a dozen huge volcanoes on Mars. For comparison,
the tallest volcano on Earth, Monacheia, is less than half
that size, just six miles over thirty three thousand feet

(01:08):
or ten kilometers high, and only two fifths of that
can be seen above the surface of the ocean. Meanwhile,
at the peak of Olympus Mons, a huge caldera or crater,
stretches across some fifty miles or eighty kilometers wide, and
the base of Olympus Mons is three hundred and forty miles.
That's five hundred and fifty kilometers wide. Basically the length

(01:31):
of the state of Mississippi. Olympus Mons is more than
twice as tall as Mount Everest, which might seem odd
given that Mars is half Earth's size by diameter, and
scientists hypothesized that Olympus Mons and its monstrous siblings grew
so tall due to three different factors. First, Mars is

(01:52):
a much more volcanically active planet than Earth. While Earth
certainly had a period of intense volcanic activity long ago,
Mars has been much more volcanically active for longer. Additionally,
the tectonic plates on Mars move more slowly than they
do here on Earth. This allows huge mountains to form
and remain, while giant mountains on Earth might be pushed

(02:15):
under other tectonic plates, what paleontologists call the process of
subduction or otherwise affected by tectonic activity. Finally, the pull
of gravity on Mars is only about thirty eight percent
as strong as it is on Earth due to differences
in the mass of each planet. Paleontologists believe this may

(02:36):
allow mountains to grow taller on Mars, since gravity doesn't
pull the magma down the same way that it does
on Earth. These forces together have allowed Olympus Mons to
form as the biggest mountain in the Solar System and
remain that way for over the billions of years in
our Solar systems history. So how do the tallest mountains

(02:58):
of our planet staff up? It depends on how you
measure them. A Mount Everest is Earth's tallest mountain on land,
rising nine thousand feet or eight thousand nine d. That
actually doesn't make it the tallest mountain on the planet,
though Monakea in Hawaii is considered the tallest when you
measure it from the sea floor, rising again at thirty

(03:20):
three thousand feet or ten kilometers. And if you want
to get really technical, the tallest mountain from the center
of the Earth is Mount Chimborazzo. This strato volcano in
Ecuador rises over two thousand, three hundred feet or seven
taller than Monakea. This is due to the Earth's centrical
bulge of the fact that the Earth is actually slightly

(03:42):
wider near the equator. Today's episode is based on the
article the tallest mountain in the Solar System is much
higher than Everest on House to Forks dot com, written
by Valerie Stymach. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart
Radio in partnership with House to fur dot com, and
it's produced by Tyler Clang. For more podcasts from my

(04:03):
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H