April 14, 2020 • 37 mins
Where is the biggest, tallest or widest mountain in the Solar System? Hint: it's not on any planet.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, jor Hey, you like the mountains, don't you. I
used to drink mountain dew. Yeah. I mean do you
like climbing mountains? Oh? Climb? I like skiing and hiking, yeah,
and I like looking at great views. All right, So
then what's the tallest mountain you ever summitted? I've been
to the top of El Capitan, and is that That
(00:29):
was like three thousand, three thousand feet I think, And
I bet that felt like a bit crazy, like a
little extreme. It was pretty pretty amazing. I mean I
was exhausted, but the views were amazing. You know, everything
looks so small. Well, what if I told you that
they were taller mountains out there, I mean like Mount Everett's.
Oh no, that's like a baby mountain. I'm talking much
much taller mountains. Well, they taste as good as mountain dew.
(01:08):
Hi am Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of
PhD comments. Hi. I'm Dania Whitson. I'm a particle physicist
and I'm learning how to live stream and welcome to
our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the university production of
I Heart Radio, in which we take a tour of
everything out there in the universe. Everything crazy, everything fast,
everything slow, everything hot, everything dense. Everything that you want
(01:30):
to know about the universe, explained in a way that
hopefully makes sense and entertains you. That's right. We take
a look at the everyday life, the physics of the
every day, and we also look at the extremes of
the universe all over, the biggest, the brightest, the loudest,
the craziest things out there in the universe, and bring
it to you here on this podcast because one of
my favorite things about the universe is that it is
(01:52):
so extreme. Here life on Earth is actually pretty calm
and slow and comfortable. But out there in the universe,
things are exploding, things are hot, things are dense. There
is crazy stuff happening out there, and that's how we
learned about the universe. We go to those places where
crazy things happen, and that shows us what is possible
in the universe. Though thankfully we don't live in one
(02:12):
of those crazy thankfully, right We Earth is pretty calm,
I think, well, not these days, definitely not these days,
but in general, in a cosmic sense, we are in
a pretty quiet part of the Solar System, and you'd
rather live in a calm place you don't want to
have a vacation home on a neutron star. I feel
like life is pretty exciting enough already as it is.
(02:34):
I don't think I need more mountains extreme. I bet
if they offered the tours of neutron Stars ski down
a slope on the mountains of Io, people would definitely
do it. Yeah, the ski left would take a lot
a long time, though. Well, we have a series of
podcasts we've been really enjoying all about the extremes of
the universe. We did the hottest place, the coldest place,
(02:56):
the biggest thing. What else did we do? We did
the emptiest thing, the itightest things, the biggest explosions in
the universe. There's a lot of st out there in
the universe, you know, And it's interesting to think that
there is sort of a maximum of these things. You know,
there is a maximum brightness, there is a maximum emptiness,
there is a maximum size of things. Yeah, and each
(03:16):
of these was fun to explore, and each one taught
us a little bit of physics along the way while
hopefully educating you about all the crazy stuff that's happening
in the universe. Yeah, and like you said, I think
It's interesting because it really kind of pushes your brain
a little bit to think beyond sort of what is
around us, or to try to wrap your head around
things that are that big or that bright or that small.
(03:37):
I think we've done smallest too, right, Yeah, well we
don't know what the smallest thing is, right, the smallest thing.
So far, we've done the funniest fart joke, the biggest
space banana. Oh wait, that that's in the queue for later,
got it. That's right. Tease the audience with that one.
But I think each of these teaches us something because
if you learn what's the datast possible thing or the
(03:58):
smallest thing and the hottest thing, it shows you what
the universe can do. And um, I think that that's
what's exciting, is prying the universe open and figuring out
what's possible, what's out there, and also just you know,
pulling ourselves out of our little cosmic neighborhood and realizing
that most of the universe is pretty different from the
kind of stuff that we experience. It's right. So today
on the podcast, we'll be talking about one such extreme
(04:20):
in the universe as part of our Extreme Universe series.
And so today we're talking about something that I think
everyone is maybe probably familiar with. I think we can
all see one maybe when we look outside our windows
every day, I hope. So it's something that I certainly enjoy.
I've always lived near one of these things, or in
one of these things, or I guess on one of
these things. I started to imagine not having went around.
(04:41):
You haven't lived under one, you haven't lived under one.
That's where I'm gonna retire. Yeah, that's my retirement play.
If things get any worse, that's where you're headed. But
today on the podcast, we'll be asking the question what
is the biggest mountain in the Solar system? The biggest
(05:04):
or the tallest? Daniel, I was going to ask you
are we doing biggest or tallest? Like do you want
to know where is the highest point sort of based
to peak or the highest point above sea level or
like the most stuff underneath the peak, Like a really
not very tall mountain but really wide would that count?
Or like if he had a really thin but tall mountain,
(05:26):
would that be the biggest. Well, from a skiing point
of view, you definitely would prefer tall and thin too
short and fat? Right? Oh? Man? I mean I don't
want to be all mountain body image stuff over here.
But you know, when it comes to skiing, there is
a difference. Yeah, well I think you know, I think,
aren't they sort of the same? I mean, if you
think about mountains, they all have sort of the same shape, right,
So this triangular shape you don't see like round mountains,
(05:48):
or like square mountains, or like tall and skinning mountains.
They're all sort of triangular shape. So aren't they the
same thing? Like asking the tallest means asking also the
biggest in terms of mass. I think, yes, if all
mountains were the same shape, then you're right, the tallest
would be the biggest. But not an expert in geology,
but having done a tiny bit of research for this podcast,
I learned that they're not actually all the same. Ship
(06:10):
There are around mountains, There are square mountains. There are
tall and thin, and they're shorter and fatter mountains like
we'll talk about it, but like volcanic mountains can be
pretty flat. And also depending on the amount of gravity,
the shape of volcanic mountain bearing. Yeah, I think there's
a formula for like the slope of a mountain depends
on what the rocks are made out of and then
also the gravity. Because you have a lot of gravity,
(06:32):
it'll will flatten the mountains, and you have less gravity,
they'll be bigger. Yeah. Yeah, So if you're a booster
for one particular mountain you think should be champion, you
might have, you know, a bone to pick at the
end after we declare our champions. Okay, but to be
on the podcast, I guess you're you're using tallest like
distance between the base of it to the peak of it.
I think based to peak is the best measurement. It
(06:53):
depends what you want in a mountain. If what you
want is an amazing view, then you really want to
be sort of highest point above sea level. But imagine
like a really big mountain that's like the size of
the whole planet. You're not going to get a great
view if you just sort of walk to the top
of that thing. So really what you want is base
to peak, right. You want to be above everything else
around you so you get a green view. I see,
(07:14):
what will give you the best perspective for the views
for the views. Yeah, but there's one more caveat which
is what if part of the mountain is underwater, Like
imagine underwater mounta with only very tip sticking out, or
what if it's like cloud covered up to the very tip,
you know, then you can't see very much. You just
see a little tip. Then you get no views at
(07:34):
all if you're standing in the clouds. So, as usual,
the deeper we dive into a topic, the more we
discover and it's funny and the more board the audience
as we keep on discussing the definition of a mountain.
But for the podcast, we're just gonna go with, um,
you know, I guess the base is what Why had
we define the base just where it stops being a mountain? Yeah?
(07:55):
And other mountains? Man, you want to start a whole
other conversation about where a mountain ends. The whole Earth
is one big mountain. I don't know. There you go.
The Sun is a mountain, The Milky Way is a mountain. Yeah,
but you might be surprised also to learn where the
highest mountain is in the Solar system. That's right. And
(08:16):
so that's the question we'll be asking today is what
is the tallest I we'll go with tallestan what is
the tallest mountain in the Solar system? By which I
mean really sort of what's the biggest one, because it's
really just about size and impressiveness, and I don't know
for me, the word tallest doesn't convey that good levels.
So we're asking what is the tallest? What is the
(08:36):
most confusing podcast system? What is it the tallest mountain
in the Solar system? And you might be surprised it's
not here on Earth, it's not even on Mars even
or Jupiter. And so we'll get to the answer here
at the end of the podcast. But first we were
wondering how knowledgeable people are about mountains in the Solar
system and if people knew where is the tallest mountain
(08:58):
in the Solar system? So I walk around campus that
you see Irvine before it was shut down, and I
asked people where was the tallest mountain in the Solar System?
And none of them, you'll notice, gave me the flat
that you just gave me. None of them said, well,
do you mean biggest or tallest? I want a clear definition.
They all understood what I meant. Well they are you
see your fine students, he said, in the most positive
(09:21):
complementary way possible. And that's right. Yeah, And so people
had opinions about this. Think about it for a second,
if some want to ask you, where are you thought
the tallest mountain in the Solar System is? What would
you say? Mount Everest? Mount Everest? There's no bigger mountain
somewhere else in the Solar System. Maybe somewhere in Jupiter.
(09:41):
I don't know. Probably not on Earth, but it might be.
I'm assuming not. We're not what planet do things like?
You have bigger mountains? The biggest mountain in the Solar System? Oh,
that's a hard question. Um, I don't know if I
(10:03):
could say for sure. I'm gonna assume that it's not
on Earth, that it's probably on a separate planet within
our Solar system. Um. Yeah, So which which planet you
think it's post like? M hmm, I'm going to say Mars? Mars? Yeah?
(10:23):
How come? Um? I would assume based on how gaseous
some of the larger planets are. I'm not sure in
terms of the planets that are closest to the Sun.
I guess I really don't know a ton about planets
in general. Marsh don't how do you post? Right? For sure?
(10:46):
Heard it's similar? But does it make sense to you
that Mars is the biggest mountain given that it's like
tektomic you're not an active uh not totally, alright, I
guess I always just thought, even if it has like
less tectonic activity, Mars is a little smaller than Earth,
(11:10):
so I guess conceivably, I don't like in the Earth.
Oh no, um, Mount Everest in the marsh. I know
there's I know, the highest mountain of the Olympics or something.
I forgot a name. Alright, A lot of great guesses,
(11:32):
I mean, know what he said, like Mount Trasta in California.
People went to other planets right away. They're like, it's
on Mars, It's on Jupiter's Mount Everest. What do you think?
What do you think of the Jupiter answer? That one
puzzled me a little bit, Like, how do you imagine
a mountain on Jupiter? Well, imagine a triangular shape, Daniel.
Is that how you start everything? Physicists start everything with
(11:52):
a spear engineer start everything with a triangle. No, like Jupiter, Like,
I don't. It doesn't have a surface. You can't really
have mount It's not a rocky planet. I was wondering
what was going through their minds as they were saying
Jupiter and the imagining, I mean, Jupiter is mostly a
gas planet. Yeah, I mean it's got you know, gas,
and then like metallic hydrogen oceans, and then the very
(12:13):
core there might be something rocky which could I guess
have features on it, But that's not really a mountain
the way we're thinking. But isn't the core made out
of like frozen gas or like you said, metallic gas, canny,
you have mountains in those? Yeah, I suppose you could.
And I think there might even be some rock and
some ice there in the core of Jupiter. But is
that really a mountain? I mean, if it's under an
(12:33):
ocean of liquid hydrogen, like if it's under water, you know,
just regular water here on Earth, do you still consider
it a mountain? Yes, definitely. Okay, so a mountain could
be covered in liquid, could be covering Look what I
see where you're going with this. I'm not sure that
this is where those people were going though. I think
they were just like, Jupiter is big, therefore biggest mountains.
(12:54):
Oh right, They're like, what's the biggest planet, Surely that
must have the biggest mountain exactly. I think that's what
they were doing. Yeah, well that makes sense, And so
let's get into this question of what is the tallest
mountain in the Solar system. And so first, what makes
a tall mountain? Daniels. So it turns out, what's the
recipe for making a mountain? At rocks stir four min
into a triangular shape? You start with your triangle cookie
(13:15):
cutter exactly. You get your triangle shape pan out. Um. No,
it turns out there are three ways to make a mountain. Right,
you are designing your your planet and you want a
big mountain. There's three techniques you can use. And the
first one is probably the one people are most familiar with,
and that's just have tech tonics. Right. That means you've
got these big plates of Earth or whatever your mountain
(13:36):
is called, banging around and slamming into each other and
pushing against each other. And where they push, they tend
to like ride up on top of each other. And
then you get mountains like your famous Himalayas. Oh, that's
how the Himalayas reformed, like two giant plates and they
crash and what comes up is the mountain. Yeah, India
basically backed up into China and the result is the Himalayas.
(13:58):
I'm not saying whose fault it is, you know, but
they exchange phone numbers, insurance information, and they're like, oh,
look what we made. China was right there. India just
like ran right into it. I mean, I know who
I'm who I'm siding with on that on that conflict.
And and so that's one way to make montains is
is having plates crashing into each other. But you can
also make them other ways, right, yeah, exactly. You can
(14:20):
also build up a mountain by spewing up um magma
from underneath the earth. Like you got a crack and
the magma spews up, you get a volcano. The lava
comes out and it builds up a mountain. And it's
that's like slowly deposit lava layer after layer after layer,
and it adds up and eventually you get a mountain.
You know, like Hawaii. Hawaii exists. It's basically the tip
(14:41):
of a mountain that starts at the bottom of the ocean.
You can you can grow a mountain too, exactly. It's
like a chia pet. Yeah, yeah, there you go. And um,
you know there's lots of famous volcanic mountains, you know,
like Mountain Vesuvius. Right, it's a mountain and it's there
because it's been positing lava and building itself up year
(15:02):
after year. And it's also interesting, like the tectonic ones,
they build up very gradually and then they get worn
down by the weather, and so they have to sort
of life cycle where they get taller and taller and taller,
and and they and they're pointy and then they get
sort of softer and round. Me Like, you can tell
how old a mountain ranges by how sharp and craggy
it is. Like the Rocky Mountains are pretty young, whereas
(15:23):
the Smoky Mountains in the eastern United States are kind
of old because they're all like smoothed over on the
top from like wind or just from like they collapse
from like wind and rain. Yeah, weather Man, Yeah, they
just get worn down. They're old and old and busted.
And the Rockies the hot new mountains. But the volcanic
mountains they're dynamic, right, Like they just keep adding more layers.
(15:47):
You know. It's like that guy who keeps putting new
rooms in his house. But they also collapse, right because
they're like sometimes doesn't the lava create like cavities underneath
and then they end up collassing. Yeah, they're unstable in
totally different ways, and so like the life cycle of
these tectonic ones and the volcanic ones are pretty different. Cool,
and so what are some other ways we can make them? All? Right?
So then the last one is sort of my favorite way,
(16:08):
which is you have is it aliens? Aliens could probably
build mountains. Man, that would have four ways? What can
aliens do? Know? This one is cool because it's so dramatic,
Like this one happens when you have a big cosmic impact,
like you have a huge crater, you know, like a
big asteroid hits the planet and it creates a big
collision and that can lead to mountains. But wait, I
(16:30):
would imagine it just makes a big hole. How can
it make a mountain unless you create a hole? And
then that you can count that as the base of
where does the rock from the whole go up, up,
up and out? Well there's that, But where does the
rock from the hole go up and out and it
comes back down? And the idea is that it like
it creates often mountains along the rim, Like if you
(16:51):
look up at a picture of meteor crater, that big
meteor crater in Arizona, you'll see that it has a
rim and that rim is raised up not just above
the bay of the crater, but also relative to the
ground near it. Right, So I guess the meteor or
something falls, or the aliens crash land, Aliens land their
really big ship. Yeah, and then it pushes everything out.
(17:12):
And that's another way to create a mountain, because you're
you're pushing earthly. Yeah, and it's sort of weird, like
on one hand, you're throwing rocks up into the air
and that eject us sort of land and they can
pile up. But also there's some sort of compression wave.
Because if you look at some of these mountains, and
we'll talk about them, they're pretty crazy. They're really sharp,
and some of these really big craters they have like
a secondary ring around it, Like you have the first
(17:35):
ring at the very edge of the crater, and then
some of them have like multiple rings around them. And
scientists don't understand it. It's like controversial. Actually reached out
to a friend of mine's a planetary scientist, and he said,
the formation of these multiple rings is controversial, but there's
some thought that they represent the imprints of seismic waves
that propagate out from the impact point. So just like
the shock wave, it just somehow like pops mountains up
(17:59):
and then they reason place. Yeah, pretty cool, it's pretty crazy.
It's pretty crazy. Thank you forgot aliens making snow angels
giant aliens lying down. I didn't forget it. I thought
of it and rected this is a science podcast and
not Jorge makes stuff up. Did you actually consider it?
(18:20):
I thought, Jorge will suggest this. I have to have
a response. Right where where? Where are your references? Daniel
proved to me that it's not possible. Okay, I'll go
to the experiment. All right, Well let's get into now,
what is the tallest mountain in the Solar System? Is
it here on Earth? Is it on Jupiter? Is it
on Mars? But first let's take a quick break. All right, Daniel,
(18:54):
we're talking about the tallest and or the biggest mountains
in the Solar System, and so I think we should
maybe start here on Earth. What do you think since
we're here I was before I was kidnapped by the
Aliens and forced to broadcast this podcast from their orbiting
mother ship. You'll be sponsored by the mountain Duke of Venus.
That's right, the extreme Aliens. Well, even if we begin
(19:17):
here on Earth, there's already something of a controversy about
what's the tallest mountain on Earth? Really, you mean scientists
can't agree on stuff. I think it's actually engineers debating
the details of definitions, because your go to answer is
Mount Everest. Right, it's like eight point eight kilometers above
sea level. It's the highest point on Earth. Right, highest
(19:39):
point above sea level. And that's a famous mountain. It's beautiful,
lots of people have died trying to climb in. It's
totally extreme. Guess its props and as we said before,
it's like the Mount Everest of mountains. It's the Mount
Everest of Mount Everest. And it's a tectonic one, right
it comes. It's part of this incredible chain of mountains
in the Himalayas. Oh really wow. And it was quite
(20:00):
a collision India into China. I think that was actually
still happening. Like I think Mount Everest is getting taller
every year. It actually grows about a quarter inch every year,
and that's because the slow motion collision between India and
China is still happening. And so India like hasn't stopped.
It ran right into China and it's just like pressed
on the gas pedal and it's just pushing and pushing
and pushing, and so this rocket just going up and
(20:23):
up and up. But wait, isn't sea levels also going up?
So isn't that raising some of that fullness? That is
a very good point. Climate change is going to bring
down Mount Everest. That's maybe the least important consequence of
climate change. But there's another contender, right, There's another contender,
which is Manukea. Manokea is a volcanic mountain in the
(20:47):
Pacific and it's only four point two kilometers of a
sea level, but that's because most of its underwater. If
you went from the tip of Manukea down to the
base at the bottom of the ocean floor, that's more
than ten kilometers. Wow. So that's ah, that's a whole
kilometer and a half bigger than Mount Everest. So I
know it like would look down in Mount Everest and
(21:08):
laugh at how pathetic it is. It's Hawaiian, so it's
probably pretty chill. It would be pretty friendly. The goddess,
it's the goddess of Lavas, who would probably be you know,
be like, hey, yeah, so I bet Hawaiian's out there.
Think of Manukea as the tallest mountain or the biggest mountain.
Also it's definitely wider, like these volcanic mountains tend to
(21:28):
be pretty wide because the lava doesn't just pile up
in one spot, right, it flows. So but going back
to right definition, it would be the biggest mountain, right
because it doesn't matter if it's underwater or partly underwater
or partly under clouds. We're talking like based to peak,
based to peak, Monukea hands down the biggest mountain on Earth. Okay,
so that's here on Earth. That's the biggest mountain we
have here on Earth. It's bigger than anything else. There's
(21:50):
no bigger feature on this planet on this planet. That's right.
That's the best we could do, all right. Then now
let's go into other planets in this Solar system and
let's start I guess with the when the one clusest
of the Sun. What's going on in Mercury, what's the
How big are the mountains and Mercury. So Mercury is
not that impressive. It's a small little planet and it
doesn't have like tectonic activity or crazy volcanoes, but it
(22:13):
is impacted a lot. So these huge rocks hit Mercury
and create these features and there's this one feature on Mercury.
It's an enormous impact and it's called the colorous Mantes
and it has these rings around the edge of it
that are three kilometers above the plane. Oh, I guess
there's no sea level in Mercury, is there? There's this
third level, no sea level? Yeah, exactly, it's what we're
(22:36):
just doing based to peak, right as the sea levels
are relevant. So based to peak. This thing that rings
this crater is three kilometers. It's sort of hard to imagine.
It's like these sharp spikes that are ringing around this crater,
and it's it's a pretty high. You know, this is
not a little bump. Three kilometers is nothing to sneeze,
a pretty tall. It's like um as big as Mountea
sea level, almost as high above sea level as Maniche is. Yeah,
(22:59):
and it's much narrower. Right, These impact mountains are these
impact features, whatever you want to call them, a much
narrower because they come from these explosions. They're more like shards, right,
They're not built up slowly. They're more dramatic. Yes, they're
very dramatic. All right, So that's very creat What about Venus?
What does Venus have Venus is pretty impressive. It has
tectonic activity and its tallest mountain is called the skady
(23:22):
Mons and it's six and a half kilometers high, so
it doesn't match Mount Everest. And it's a tectonic mountain,
so it's formed by you know, crushing together of these plates.
But the weirdest thing about this mountain is Venus's atmosphere. Right. Remember,
Venus is really weird. And people think that Venus once
looked like Earth, that it once had a nice temper
(23:44):
climate and maybe even oceans, and then it was hit
by huge meteor that caused basically climate change and a
runaway greenhouse effect. They heated it up, and now the
atmosphere is crazy and it's like nine degrees on the
surface of Venus. And so the surface of this mountain
is covered in metallic snow flakes of lead that have
(24:06):
precipitated lead. The snow snow made of flakes of lead. Yeah. Like,
now talk about extreme skiing. That's like a quadruple black
diamond right there with a couple of crossbones, just to
make sure you don't ski on the It's a lead
diamond and it's hard to understand, like the weather on
the surface because not only is it really hot to
(24:29):
imagine this stuff would just melt, it's also really high pressure.
So the phase diagrams are pretty complicated, so you can
get stuff that's solid at higher temperatures than it would
be here on Earth because of the pressure. Oh I see,
it's not just hot nine out trees, it's also super
high pressure, really high pressure. So yeah, not a good place.
I do not recommend skiing on castle. That's key vacation. Yeah,
(24:50):
everything we've sent to the surface of Venus like has
lasted for you know, minutes and then been crushed because
the because of the pressure. Alright, but still that's a
pretty big mountains six point four kilometers and it's like
time we know it's tectonic because you can see the
plates on Venus kind of coming together or they're just
not in the form of a ring. They're not in
the form of a ring, and it doesn't look like
(25:10):
volcanic and so they've deduced from looking at the surface
of Venus that there's tectonic activity. I don't know if
they know exactly where the edges of those plates are,
but this definitely looks like a tectonic mountain. Well, it's
interesting to think that Earth has bigger mountains than all
of these other planets so far. Ye, and remember that
Earth is bigger than Mercury, right, so you'd expect a
bigger planet to have larger features, just sort of like proportionally.
(25:32):
And Earth is about the same size as Venus. It's
pretty close, and so you expect them to be about
the same size. And hey, you know, it's not far off.
So I understand why you imagine a bigger planet would
have bigger mountains, But it's actually sort of the opposite
later when we get to Mars, which is confusing. So
having a bigger planet doesn't mean have bigger mountains, not necessarily.
How about tallest mountains, triangulist mountains, square mountains? All right, Well,
(25:57):
that takes us to somewhere else in the Solar System.
Where else can we find big mountains? Apparently that we
can have mounts, not just some planets. We can also
have him on moons. Yeah, we can have them on
the moons. So our moon has a pretty impressive feature.
It's mons hygans and it's five and a half kilometers
high from an impact almost four billion years ago, some
huge thing hit it that was like two hundred and
(26:18):
fifty kilometers wide, and so you have this crazy crater
with edges of it that have these features of it
that are almost six kilometers up and you can see
him in a ring. Can you see him from earth
or is it on the other side of the moon.
You can see them from Earth and can study them
in a telescope, and so they're pretty impressive. Cool, and
it's it's our moon. Is not the only moon with mountains,
(26:39):
that's right, And they get harder and harder to pronounce.
And if you get further out, Yes, does our moon
have a name or is it just the moon? Our
moon is called Luna and our sun is called Soul.
Did you just make that up? I know that it's
Soul has it's the name of our sun. But I
never heard our moon called Luna. It's called Luna. Check
it nice. But the moon Io has a feature called
(27:00):
boy bussal Mantes and it's eighteen kilometers high. What, yes,
eighteen kilometers so it like blows away Mount Everest, blows
away Monica. So Io is a moon of what Jupiter? Saturn?
I was a moon of Jupiter and it's the most
volcanically active world in the whole Solar system. So it's
(27:20):
got a lot of stuff going on, the most volcanically
active volcanoes Everywhere's a lot of stuff going on on
the inside of Io, and that also leads to tectonic activity.
And so this thing is actually a tectonic mountain on Io.
And it's eighteen kilometers high. So that's pretty impressive. It's
like twice the height of Mount Everest. Yeah, and I
(27:41):
was pretty impressed until I started reading about the moons
of Saturn. Now there's one moon of Saturn called Us
and this one is so weird. It's got a ridge
all the way around the equator that's twenty kilometers high.
It looks sort of like a like a walnut, you know,
like a spherical object with a ring around on the
edge of it, like a belt, Like it has a belt. Yeah,
(28:02):
it's like a like love handles, like love handles, maybe
it ate a bunch of other moods. And it goes
all the way around. It goes three quarters of the
way around, three quarters of the way around. Nobody understands it,
nobody knows why, nobody knows how. Like somebody squished the planet,
like took it from top to bottom and it squished
and like bulget out mountains in the middle. Definitely some
interesting history there. And you know, it's not a small feature.
(28:25):
It's twenty kilometers high, so and it would be all around,
so it's like Manukea plus mount Everest not even as
tall as and it would just you would see it
as this mountain range that just keeps going off into
the horizon in both directions. It's a really weird feature. Yeah.
All right, Well, we are getting closer to the biggest mountain,
(28:46):
the tallest mountain in the Solar System, and so we'll
we've we've we've come down to the final two and
so let's get into what they are, where they are,
and how tall they are. But first let's take a
quick break. All right, So we're talking about the tallest
(29:14):
mountain in the Solar System. Our first runner up for
tallest mountain is not here on Earth. It's not on
any Moon, it's not on Jupiter. It's actually on Mars. Yeah.
It's sort of amazing little Mars, right, It's much smaller
than Earth but has much bigger features. It's very dramatic.
And this mountain on Mars is the Olympus Mons and
(29:34):
it's almost twenty two kilometers high. I remember Mount Never
almost nine kilometers. Mount o Kea, our tallest volcano is
ten kilometers. This thing is too. It's basically called Mount Olympus,
like the Greek exactly. It definitely wins the Olympics of mountains.
It's enormous and it's and it's not just tall, right,
(29:57):
it's also it's also really big becau because there's not
that much gravity on Mars, and so it's sort of
flows and becomes really broad, and the whole mountain if
you look at like the edges of it, it goes
it's like the size of France. Wow, if you were
to walk from the tip to the base, it'd be
like walking from the center of France to the border. Yeah.
(30:17):
You can take like the outline of this mountain and
superimposed on France and you're like, yeah, that's about the
same side. Do you think that's cheating a little bit? Though?
Like if you have less gravity, does that is that
like steroids? Kind of in the Olympics that mountain rises
because it's like or you know how they it's easier
to run and the higher altitudes because there's less gravity.
You know, Yeah, I think people were thinking bigger planet,
(30:40):
bigger mountains, But you're right, smaller planet, less gravity, bigger features,
easier to maintain a big mountain, yeah, and easier to
build it up and easier to maintain it. Things don't
roll down as much. And so that's pretty impressive. That's
twenty one nine kilometers And it's volcanic, right, it's stuff
spewing out from the inside of Mars. Mars doesn't have
tectonic activity as far as we know, so volcanoes are impact.
(31:03):
Is the only way Mars could get up onto this list.
And this is a volcanic mountain, right, And so that's
the biggest mountain on a planet in the Solar System,
that's right. Like that's if you're just counting planets or moons,
that's it. Is this the biggest mont that's it. That's
the number one feature on a planet in the Solar System.
But but the most impressive is a really, really weird
(31:26):
feature is on an asteroid, an asteroid. It's not even
on a planet. It's not even on a planet. It's
not even on a moon. It's on an asteroid. There's
this one asteroid in the asteroid belt. It's pretty big
it's like five hundred kilometers wide, which is sizeable for
an asteroid, and it's got this feature on it from
(31:47):
an impact crater. And the the thing you have to understand
is that the crater itself is four hundred kilometers wa
wait wait what what? Wait? Wait? So how can it's
like the most of the asteroid is a crater. Yes,
the whole like back half of this thing, the south
pole is this thing is just a big crater. Like
this thing was totally rear ended and it didn't get
(32:08):
any insurance information because nobody fixed this thing up. Like
the whole back of this thing was just blown out
in a big crater. It's like it's like if you
take an apple and you take a giant bite out
of it, that's kind of what you get. Yeah. Yeah,
but it's even weirder because this impact happened like a
billion years ago. But the mountain is actually at the
center and that's something I don't understand at all. And
(32:30):
the mountain has this name, it's called Rhea Silva. And
the mountain at the center of this crater is twenty
two kilometers high, so it's like just taller than that
mountain on Mark. Wait. Wait, okay, so um. So, the
biggest mountain in the Solar System is not on a planet.
It's on an asteroid called what Vesta is the name
of the asteroid Vesta, and the asteroid is five kilometers wide.
(32:55):
It has a hole that's four d kilometers wide, and
in the middle of that whole is a mountain. It's
such a weird structor to think about it. There is
weird stuff out there in the Solar System, and that's
why I love these episodes, because like it's basically like
a bowl, like a flying bowl with a with a
mountain of guacamole in the middle, floating out in space.
If you had lunch yet, or hey, I think maybe
you should have a snack before these episodes. I need
(33:18):
another banana. It's pretty weird. I was looking at pictures
of this thing and it's definitely something weird to look at. Okay,
so if I google it, what does it look like.
It looks like a huge hole with a mountain in
the middle. It's just a flying hole with with a
pimple in the middle. And we've learned a lot about
Vesta actually because bits of it have fallen to Earth,
like this collision happened a billion years ago, and a
(33:40):
lot of the asteroids in the Asteroid belt used to
be bits of Vesta, and then some of them fell
to Earth, and like, you know, we can pick up
a rock here on Earth and we can be like,
this rock doesn't seem like it was formed on Earth.
It seems like the Moon, or it seems like Mars,
or it seems like this weird asteroid. And it's a
pretty cool way to explore the Solar System just by
finding little bits of it here on Earth. And it's
(34:01):
amazing we can track it, like this bit of of
I rack came from that asteroid bazillion miles away. Yeah,
because a lot of these have their own different history, right,
and that leads to different you know, fractions of ice
and different kinds of ice, and different kinds of rock
and different um you know, heavy metals and stuff. And
so from those sort of fingerprints you can tell where
a rock came from, which I think is amazing. And
(34:23):
so we found bits of Vesta. But Vesta, in my mind,
is the champ. It's just slightly edges out Mars, but
it is more impressive. Okay, So it has a feature
that looks like a mountain. That is a mountain, I
guess is a triangular is it? It's just a it's
a giant bump that peak two basse is Yeah, And
(34:44):
the edges of this crater are also very dramatic. They
don't quite rise twenty two kilometers, but they're you know,
on the same scale there in the teens. And you're
saying it's mostly made out of it's not made out
of rock. Yeah, it's like rock and mostly ice, right,
And there's people don't understand. There's a lot of ice
out there in the Solar System. It's huge chunks of it.
And like some of those outer planets are icy giants,
(35:04):
so there's an enormous amount of water frozen in ice
in the outer Solar System. We have no shortage of resources.
Like those movies where the aliens come to steal our water.
It's like, what are you doing? There's so much more
water out there. There's a bunch of ice tomorrow where
they're like sucking up our oceans with giant vacuums, and
I'm like, what so so that that means the biggest
(35:25):
mountain in the Solar System is mostly made out of ice,
mostly made out of ice, Yep, it's ice mountain, no kidding.
It's like you you can ski on it year round
for a long time. I don't know what a year
is like on Vesta, but probably probably. I don't think
the weather changes very much. And so this is out
than in the asteroid belt beyond kind of our planets
or in between our planet. It was in the inner
(35:47):
asteroid Bell. It's not out in the equiper belt, and
so it's not actually too far cool. Well, there you go.
That is the biggest mountain, the tallest mountain in the
Solar System. It's a meat out of ice and it's
in an asteroid, which is pretty amazing. Well, I think
we ran down the list, Daniel. We found our champion. Yes,
I think we did. We can crown it if we
could get to the topic. We can get to the
base of it. How do we even get there? All right? Well,
(36:11):
we hope you enjoyed a trip into extreme mountains. Thanks
for tuning in for these Extreme Universe episodes and keep
sending us your questions and suggestions. We love our listener mail.
Thanks for listening. See you next time. Before you still
(36:33):
have a question backdown listening to all these explanations. Please
drop us the line we'd love to hear from it.
You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
Daniel and Jorge That's one Word, or email us at
Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening,
and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explaining the Universe is
a production of I Heart Radio. More podcast from my
(36:55):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you thing to your favorite chips. M h m hmmmm.
Hey, jor Hey, you like the mountains, don't you. I
used to drink mountain dew. Yeah. I mean do you
like climbing mountains? Oh? Climb? I like skiing and hiking, yeah,
and I like looking at great views. All right, So
then what's the tallest mountain you ever summitted? I've been
to the top of El Capitan, and is that That
(00:29):
was like three thousand, three thousand feet I think, And
I bet that felt like a bit crazy, like a
little extreme. It was pretty pretty amazing. I mean I
was exhausted, but the views were amazing. You know, everything
looks so small. Well, what if I told you that
they were taller mountains out there, I mean like Mount Everett's.
Oh no, that's like a baby mountain. I'm talking much
much taller mountains. Well, they taste as good as mountain dew.
(01:08):
Hi am Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of
PhD comments. Hi. I'm Dania Whitson. I'm a particle physicist
and I'm learning how to live stream and welcome to
our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the university production of
I Heart Radio, in which we take a tour of
everything out there in the universe. Everything crazy, everything fast,
everything slow, everything hot, everything dense. Everything that you want
(01:30):
to know about the universe, explained in a way that
hopefully makes sense and entertains you. That's right. We take
a look at the everyday life, the physics of the
every day, and we also look at the extremes of
the universe all over, the biggest, the brightest, the loudest,
the craziest things out there in the universe, and bring
it to you here on this podcast because one of
my favorite things about the universe is that it is
(01:52):
so extreme. Here life on Earth is actually pretty calm
and slow and comfortable. But out there in the universe,
things are exploding, things are hot, things are dense. There
is crazy stuff happening out there, and that's how we
learned about the universe. We go to those places where
crazy things happen, and that shows us what is possible
in the universe. Though thankfully we don't live in one
(02:12):
of those crazy thankfully, right We Earth is pretty calm,
I think, well, not these days, definitely not these days,
but in general, in a cosmic sense, we are in
a pretty quiet part of the Solar System, and you'd
rather live in a calm place you don't want to
have a vacation home on a neutron star. I feel
like life is pretty exciting enough already as it is.
(02:34):
I don't think I need more mountains extreme. I bet
if they offered the tours of neutron Stars ski down
a slope on the mountains of Io, people would definitely
do it. Yeah, the ski left would take a lot
a long time, though. Well, we have a series of
podcasts we've been really enjoying all about the extremes of
the universe. We did the hottest place, the coldest place,
(02:56):
the biggest thing. What else did we do? We did
the emptiest thing, the itightest things, the biggest explosions in
the universe. There's a lot of st out there in
the universe, you know, And it's interesting to think that
there is sort of a maximum of these things. You know,
there is a maximum brightness, there is a maximum emptiness,
there is a maximum size of things. Yeah, and each
(03:16):
of these was fun to explore, and each one taught
us a little bit of physics along the way while
hopefully educating you about all the crazy stuff that's happening
in the universe. Yeah, and like you said, I think
It's interesting because it really kind of pushes your brain
a little bit to think beyond sort of what is
around us, or to try to wrap your head around
things that are that big or that bright or that small.
(03:37):
I think we've done smallest too, right, Yeah, well we
don't know what the smallest thing is, right, the smallest thing.
So far, we've done the funniest fart joke, the biggest
space banana. Oh wait, that that's in the queue for later,
got it. That's right. Tease the audience with that one.
But I think each of these teaches us something because
if you learn what's the datast possible thing or the
(03:58):
smallest thing and the hottest thing, it shows you what
the universe can do. And um, I think that that's
what's exciting, is prying the universe open and figuring out
what's possible, what's out there, and also just you know,
pulling ourselves out of our little cosmic neighborhood and realizing
that most of the universe is pretty different from the
kind of stuff that we experience. It's right. So today
on the podcast, we'll be talking about one such extreme
(04:20):
in the universe as part of our Extreme Universe series.
And so today we're talking about something that I think
everyone is maybe probably familiar with. I think we can
all see one maybe when we look outside our windows
every day, I hope. So it's something that I certainly enjoy.
I've always lived near one of these things, or in
one of these things, or I guess on one of
these things. I started to imagine not having went around.
(04:41):
You haven't lived under one, you haven't lived under one.
That's where I'm gonna retire. Yeah, that's my retirement play.
If things get any worse, that's where you're headed. But
today on the podcast, we'll be asking the question what
is the biggest mountain in the Solar system? The biggest
(05:04):
or the tallest? Daniel, I was going to ask you
are we doing biggest or tallest? Like do you want
to know where is the highest point sort of based
to peak or the highest point above sea level or
like the most stuff underneath the peak, Like a really
not very tall mountain but really wide would that count?
Or like if he had a really thin but tall mountain,
(05:26):
would that be the biggest. Well, from a skiing point
of view, you definitely would prefer tall and thin too
short and fat? Right? Oh? Man? I mean I don't
want to be all mountain body image stuff over here.
But you know, when it comes to skiing, there is
a difference. Yeah, well I think you know, I think,
aren't they sort of the same? I mean, if you
think about mountains, they all have sort of the same shape, right,
So this triangular shape you don't see like round mountains,
(05:48):
or like square mountains, or like tall and skinning mountains.
They're all sort of triangular shape. So aren't they the
same thing? Like asking the tallest means asking also the
biggest in terms of mass. I think, yes, if all
mountains were the same shape, then you're right, the tallest
would be the biggest. But not an expert in geology,
but having done a tiny bit of research for this podcast,
I learned that they're not actually all the same. Ship
(06:10):
There are around mountains, There are square mountains. There are
tall and thin, and they're shorter and fatter mountains like
we'll talk about it, but like volcanic mountains can be
pretty flat. And also depending on the amount of gravity,
the shape of volcanic mountain bearing. Yeah, I think there's
a formula for like the slope of a mountain depends
on what the rocks are made out of and then
also the gravity. Because you have a lot of gravity,
(06:32):
it'll will flatten the mountains, and you have less gravity,
they'll be bigger. Yeah. Yeah, So if you're a booster
for one particular mountain you think should be champion, you
might have, you know, a bone to pick at the
end after we declare our champions. Okay, but to be
on the podcast, I guess you're you're using tallest like
distance between the base of it to the peak of it.
I think based to peak is the best measurement. It
(06:53):
depends what you want in a mountain. If what you
want is an amazing view, then you really want to
be sort of highest point above sea level. But imagine
like a really big mountain that's like the size of
the whole planet. You're not going to get a great
view if you just sort of walk to the top
of that thing. So really what you want is base
to peak, right. You want to be above everything else
around you so you get a green view. I see,
(07:14):
what will give you the best perspective for the views
for the views. Yeah, but there's one more caveat which
is what if part of the mountain is underwater, Like
imagine underwater mounta with only very tip sticking out, or
what if it's like cloud covered up to the very tip,
you know, then you can't see very much. You just
see a little tip. Then you get no views at
(07:34):
all if you're standing in the clouds. So, as usual,
the deeper we dive into a topic, the more we
discover and it's funny and the more board the audience
as we keep on discussing the definition of a mountain.
But for the podcast, we're just gonna go with, um,
you know, I guess the base is what Why had
we define the base just where it stops being a mountain? Yeah?
(07:55):
And other mountains? Man, you want to start a whole
other conversation about where a mountain ends. The whole Earth
is one big mountain. I don't know. There you go.
The Sun is a mountain, The Milky Way is a mountain. Yeah,
but you might be surprised also to learn where the
highest mountain is in the Solar system. That's right. And
(08:16):
so that's the question we'll be asking today is what
is the tallest I we'll go with tallestan what is
the tallest mountain in the Solar system? By which I
mean really sort of what's the biggest one, because it's
really just about size and impressiveness, and I don't know
for me, the word tallest doesn't convey that good levels.
So we're asking what is the tallest? What is the
(08:36):
most confusing podcast system? What is it the tallest mountain
in the Solar system? And you might be surprised it's
not here on Earth, it's not even on Mars even
or Jupiter. And so we'll get to the answer here
at the end of the podcast. But first we were
wondering how knowledgeable people are about mountains in the Solar
system and if people knew where is the tallest mountain
(08:58):
in the Solar system? So I walk around campus that
you see Irvine before it was shut down, and I
asked people where was the tallest mountain in the Solar System?
And none of them, you'll notice, gave me the flat
that you just gave me. None of them said, well,
do you mean biggest or tallest? I want a clear definition.
They all understood what I meant. Well they are you
see your fine students, he said, in the most positive
(09:21):
complementary way possible. And that's right. Yeah, And so people
had opinions about this. Think about it for a second,
if some want to ask you, where are you thought
the tallest mountain in the Solar System is? What would
you say? Mount Everest? Mount Everest? There's no bigger mountain
somewhere else in the Solar System. Maybe somewhere in Jupiter.
(09:41):
I don't know. Probably not on Earth, but it might be.
I'm assuming not. We're not what planet do things like?
You have bigger mountains? The biggest mountain in the Solar System? Oh,
that's a hard question. Um, I don't know if I
(10:03):
could say for sure. I'm gonna assume that it's not
on Earth, that it's probably on a separate planet within
our Solar system. Um. Yeah, So which which planet you
think it's post like? M hmm, I'm going to say Mars? Mars? Yeah?
(10:23):
How come? Um? I would assume based on how gaseous
some of the larger planets are. I'm not sure in
terms of the planets that are closest to the Sun.
I guess I really don't know a ton about planets
in general. Marsh don't how do you post? Right? For sure?
(10:46):
Heard it's similar? But does it make sense to you
that Mars is the biggest mountain given that it's like
tektomic you're not an active uh not totally, alright, I
guess I always just thought, even if it has like
less tectonic activity, Mars is a little smaller than Earth,
(11:10):
so I guess conceivably, I don't like in the Earth.
Oh no, um, Mount Everest in the marsh. I know
there's I know, the highest mountain of the Olympics or something.
I forgot a name. Alright, A lot of great guesses,
(11:32):
I mean, know what he said, like Mount Trasta in California.
People went to other planets right away. They're like, it's
on Mars, It's on Jupiter's Mount Everest. What do you think?
What do you think of the Jupiter answer? That one
puzzled me a little bit, Like, how do you imagine
a mountain on Jupiter? Well, imagine a triangular shape, Daniel.
Is that how you start everything? Physicists start everything with
(11:52):
a spear engineer start everything with a triangle. No, like Jupiter, Like,
I don't. It doesn't have a surface. You can't really
have mount It's not a rocky planet. I was wondering
what was going through their minds as they were saying
Jupiter and the imagining, I mean, Jupiter is mostly a
gas planet. Yeah, I mean it's got you know, gas,
and then like metallic hydrogen oceans, and then the very
(12:13):
core there might be something rocky which could I guess
have features on it, But that's not really a mountain
the way we're thinking. But isn't the core made out
of like frozen gas or like you said, metallic gas, canny,
you have mountains in those? Yeah, I suppose you could.
And I think there might even be some rock and
some ice there in the core of Jupiter. But is
that really a mountain? I mean, if it's under an
(12:33):
ocean of liquid hydrogen, like if it's under water, you know,
just regular water here on Earth, do you still consider
it a mountain? Yes, definitely. Okay, so a mountain could
be covered in liquid, could be covering Look what I
see where you're going with this. I'm not sure that
this is where those people were going though. I think
they were just like, Jupiter is big, therefore biggest mountains.
(12:54):
Oh right, They're like, what's the biggest planet, Surely that
must have the biggest mountain exactly. I think that's what
they were doing. Yeah, well that makes sense, And so
let's get into this question of what is the tallest
mountain in the Solar system. And so first, what makes
a tall mountain? Daniels. So it turns out, what's the
recipe for making a mountain? At rocks stir four min
into a triangular shape? You start with your triangle cookie
(13:15):
cutter exactly. You get your triangle shape pan out. Um. No,
it turns out there are three ways to make a mountain. Right,
you are designing your your planet and you want a
big mountain. There's three techniques you can use. And the
first one is probably the one people are most familiar with,
and that's just have tech tonics. Right. That means you've
got these big plates of Earth or whatever your mountain
(13:36):
is called, banging around and slamming into each other and
pushing against each other. And where they push, they tend
to like ride up on top of each other. And
then you get mountains like your famous Himalayas. Oh, that's
how the Himalayas reformed, like two giant plates and they
crash and what comes up is the mountain. Yeah, India
basically backed up into China and the result is the Himalayas.
(13:58):
I'm not saying whose fault it is, you know, but
they exchange phone numbers, insurance information, and they're like, oh,
look what we made. China was right there. India just
like ran right into it. I mean, I know who
I'm who I'm siding with on that on that conflict.
And and so that's one way to make montains is
is having plates crashing into each other. But you can
also make them other ways, right, yeah, exactly. You can
(14:20):
also build up a mountain by spewing up um magma
from underneath the earth. Like you got a crack and
the magma spews up, you get a volcano. The lava
comes out and it builds up a mountain. And it's
that's like slowly deposit lava layer after layer after layer,
and it adds up and eventually you get a mountain.
You know, like Hawaii. Hawaii exists. It's basically the tip
(14:41):
of a mountain that starts at the bottom of the ocean.
You can you can grow a mountain too, exactly. It's
like a chia pet. Yeah, yeah, there you go. And um,
you know there's lots of famous volcanic mountains, you know,
like Mountain Vesuvius. Right, it's a mountain and it's there
because it's been positing lava and building itself up year
(15:02):
after year. And it's also interesting, like the tectonic ones,
they build up very gradually and then they get worn
down by the weather, and so they have to sort
of life cycle where they get taller and taller and taller,
and and they and they're pointy and then they get
sort of softer and round. Me Like, you can tell
how old a mountain ranges by how sharp and craggy
it is. Like the Rocky Mountains are pretty young, whereas
(15:23):
the Smoky Mountains in the eastern United States are kind
of old because they're all like smoothed over on the
top from like wind or just from like they collapse
from like wind and rain. Yeah, weather Man, Yeah, they
just get worn down. They're old and old and busted.
And the Rockies the hot new mountains. But the volcanic
mountains they're dynamic, right, Like they just keep adding more layers.
(15:47):
You know. It's like that guy who keeps putting new
rooms in his house. But they also collapse, right because
they're like sometimes doesn't the lava create like cavities underneath
and then they end up collassing. Yeah, they're unstable in
totally different ways, and so like the life cycle of
these tectonic ones and the volcanic ones are pretty different. Cool,
and so what are some other ways we can make them? All? Right?
So then the last one is sort of my favorite way,
(16:08):
which is you have is it aliens? Aliens could probably
build mountains. Man, that would have four ways? What can
aliens do? Know? This one is cool because it's so dramatic,
Like this one happens when you have a big cosmic impact,
like you have a huge crater, you know, like a
big asteroid hits the planet and it creates a big
collision and that can lead to mountains. But wait, I
(16:30):
would imagine it just makes a big hole. How can
it make a mountain unless you create a hole? And
then that you can count that as the base of
where does the rock from the whole go up, up,
up and out? Well there's that, But where does the
rock from the hole go up and out and it
comes back down? And the idea is that it like
it creates often mountains along the rim, Like if you
(16:51):
look up at a picture of meteor crater, that big
meteor crater in Arizona, you'll see that it has a
rim and that rim is raised up not just above
the bay of the crater, but also relative to the
ground near it. Right, So I guess the meteor or
something falls, or the aliens crash land, Aliens land their
really big ship. Yeah, and then it pushes everything out.
(17:12):
And that's another way to create a mountain, because you're
you're pushing earthly. Yeah, and it's sort of weird, like
on one hand, you're throwing rocks up into the air
and that eject us sort of land and they can
pile up. But also there's some sort of compression wave.
Because if you look at some of these mountains, and
we'll talk about them, they're pretty crazy. They're really sharp,
and some of these really big craters they have like
a secondary ring around it, Like you have the first
(17:35):
ring at the very edge of the crater, and then
some of them have like multiple rings around them. And
scientists don't understand it. It's like controversial. Actually reached out
to a friend of mine's a planetary scientist, and he said,
the formation of these multiple rings is controversial, but there's
some thought that they represent the imprints of seismic waves
that propagate out from the impact point. So just like
the shock wave, it just somehow like pops mountains up
(17:59):
and then they reason place. Yeah, pretty cool, it's pretty crazy.
It's pretty crazy. Thank you forgot aliens making snow angels
giant aliens lying down. I didn't forget it. I thought
of it and rected this is a science podcast and
not Jorge makes stuff up. Did you actually consider it?
(18:20):
I thought, Jorge will suggest this. I have to have
a response. Right where where? Where are your references? Daniel
proved to me that it's not possible. Okay, I'll go
to the experiment. All right, Well let's get into now,
what is the tallest mountain in the Solar System? Is
it here on Earth? Is it on Jupiter? Is it
on Mars? But first let's take a quick break. All right, Daniel,
(18:54):
we're talking about the tallest and or the biggest mountains
in the Solar System, and so I think we should
maybe start here on Earth. What do you think since
we're here I was before I was kidnapped by the
Aliens and forced to broadcast this podcast from their orbiting
mother ship. You'll be sponsored by the mountain Duke of Venus.
That's right, the extreme Aliens. Well, even if we begin
(19:17):
here on Earth, there's already something of a controversy about
what's the tallest mountain on Earth? Really, you mean scientists
can't agree on stuff. I think it's actually engineers debating
the details of definitions, because your go to answer is
Mount Everest. Right, it's like eight point eight kilometers above
sea level. It's the highest point on Earth. Right, highest
(19:39):
point above sea level. And that's a famous mountain. It's beautiful,
lots of people have died trying to climb in. It's
totally extreme. Guess its props and as we said before,
it's like the Mount Everest of mountains. It's the Mount
Everest of Mount Everest. And it's a tectonic one, right
it comes. It's part of this incredible chain of mountains
in the Himalayas. Oh really wow. And it was quite
(20:00):
a collision India into China. I think that was actually
still happening. Like I think Mount Everest is getting taller
every year. It actually grows about a quarter inch every year,
and that's because the slow motion collision between India and
China is still happening. And so India like hasn't stopped.
It ran right into China and it's just like pressed
on the gas pedal and it's just pushing and pushing
and pushing, and so this rocket just going up and
(20:23):
up and up. But wait, isn't sea levels also going up?
So isn't that raising some of that fullness? That is
a very good point. Climate change is going to bring
down Mount Everest. That's maybe the least important consequence of
climate change. But there's another contender, right, There's another contender,
which is Manukea. Manokea is a volcanic mountain in the
(20:47):
Pacific and it's only four point two kilometers of a
sea level, but that's because most of its underwater. If
you went from the tip of Manukea down to the
base at the bottom of the ocean floor, that's more
than ten kilometers. Wow. So that's ah, that's a whole
kilometer and a half bigger than Mount Everest. So I
know it like would look down in Mount Everest and
(21:08):
laugh at how pathetic it is. It's Hawaiian, so it's
probably pretty chill. It would be pretty friendly. The goddess,
it's the goddess of Lavas, who would probably be you know,
be like, hey, yeah, so I bet Hawaiian's out there.
Think of Manukea as the tallest mountain or the biggest mountain.
Also it's definitely wider, like these volcanic mountains tend to
(21:28):
be pretty wide because the lava doesn't just pile up
in one spot, right, it flows. So but going back
to right definition, it would be the biggest mountain, right
because it doesn't matter if it's underwater or partly underwater
or partly under clouds. We're talking like based to peak,
based to peak, Monukea hands down the biggest mountain on Earth. Okay,
so that's here on Earth. That's the biggest mountain we
have here on Earth. It's bigger than anything else. There's
(21:50):
no bigger feature on this planet on this planet. That's right.
That's the best we could do, all right. Then now
let's go into other planets in this Solar system and
let's start I guess with the when the one clusest
of the Sun. What's going on in Mercury, what's the
How big are the mountains and Mercury. So Mercury is
not that impressive. It's a small little planet and it
doesn't have like tectonic activity or crazy volcanoes, but it
(22:13):
is impacted a lot. So these huge rocks hit Mercury
and create these features and there's this one feature on Mercury.
It's an enormous impact and it's called the colorous Mantes
and it has these rings around the edge of it
that are three kilometers above the plane. Oh, I guess
there's no sea level in Mercury, is there? There's this
third level, no sea level? Yeah, exactly, it's what we're
(22:36):
just doing based to peak, right as the sea levels
are relevant. So based to peak. This thing that rings
this crater is three kilometers. It's sort of hard to imagine.
It's like these sharp spikes that are ringing around this crater,
and it's it's a pretty high. You know, this is
not a little bump. Three kilometers is nothing to sneeze,
a pretty tall. It's like um as big as Mountea
sea level, almost as high above sea level as Maniche is. Yeah,
(22:59):
and it's much narrower. Right, These impact mountains are these
impact features, whatever you want to call them, a much
narrower because they come from these explosions. They're more like shards, right,
They're not built up slowly. They're more dramatic. Yes, they're
very dramatic. All right, So that's very creat What about Venus?
What does Venus have Venus is pretty impressive. It has
tectonic activity and its tallest mountain is called the skady
(23:22):
Mons and it's six and a half kilometers high, so
it doesn't match Mount Everest. And it's a tectonic mountain,
so it's formed by you know, crushing together of these plates.
But the weirdest thing about this mountain is Venus's atmosphere. Right. Remember,
Venus is really weird. And people think that Venus once
looked like Earth, that it once had a nice temper
(23:44):
climate and maybe even oceans, and then it was hit
by huge meteor that caused basically climate change and a
runaway greenhouse effect. They heated it up, and now the
atmosphere is crazy and it's like nine degrees on the
surface of Venus. And so the surface of this mountain
is covered in metallic snow flakes of lead that have
(24:06):
precipitated lead. The snow snow made of flakes of lead. Yeah. Like,
now talk about extreme skiing. That's like a quadruple black
diamond right there with a couple of crossbones, just to
make sure you don't ski on the It's a lead
diamond and it's hard to understand, like the weather on
the surface because not only is it really hot to
(24:29):
imagine this stuff would just melt, it's also really high pressure.
So the phase diagrams are pretty complicated, so you can
get stuff that's solid at higher temperatures than it would
be here on Earth because of the pressure. Oh I see,
it's not just hot nine out trees, it's also super
high pressure, really high pressure. So yeah, not a good place.
I do not recommend skiing on castle. That's key vacation. Yeah,
(24:50):
everything we've sent to the surface of Venus like has
lasted for you know, minutes and then been crushed because
the because of the pressure. Alright, but still that's a
pretty big mountains six point four kilometers and it's like
time we know it's tectonic because you can see the
plates on Venus kind of coming together or they're just
not in the form of a ring. They're not in
the form of a ring, and it doesn't look like
(25:10):
volcanic and so they've deduced from looking at the surface
of Venus that there's tectonic activity. I don't know if
they know exactly where the edges of those plates are,
but this definitely looks like a tectonic mountain. Well, it's
interesting to think that Earth has bigger mountains than all
of these other planets so far. Ye, and remember that
Earth is bigger than Mercury, right, so you'd expect a
bigger planet to have larger features, just sort of like proportionally.
(25:32):
And Earth is about the same size as Venus. It's
pretty close, and so you expect them to be about
the same size. And hey, you know, it's not far off.
So I understand why you imagine a bigger planet would
have bigger mountains, But it's actually sort of the opposite
later when we get to Mars, which is confusing. So
having a bigger planet doesn't mean have bigger mountains, not necessarily.
How about tallest mountains, triangulist mountains, square mountains? All right, Well,
(25:57):
that takes us to somewhere else in the Solar System.
Where else can we find big mountains? Apparently that we
can have mounts, not just some planets. We can also
have him on moons. Yeah, we can have them on
the moons. So our moon has a pretty impressive feature.
It's mons hygans and it's five and a half kilometers
high from an impact almost four billion years ago, some
huge thing hit it that was like two hundred and
(26:18):
fifty kilometers wide, and so you have this crazy crater
with edges of it that have these features of it
that are almost six kilometers up and you can see
him in a ring. Can you see him from earth
or is it on the other side of the moon.
You can see them from Earth and can study them
in a telescope, and so they're pretty impressive. Cool, and
it's it's our moon. Is not the only moon with mountains,
(26:39):
that's right, And they get harder and harder to pronounce.
And if you get further out, Yes, does our moon
have a name or is it just the moon? Our
moon is called Luna and our sun is called Soul.
Did you just make that up? I know that it's
Soul has it's the name of our sun. But I
never heard our moon called Luna. It's called Luna. Check
it nice. But the moon Io has a feature called
(27:00):
boy bussal Mantes and it's eighteen kilometers high. What, yes,
eighteen kilometers so it like blows away Mount Everest, blows
away Monica. So Io is a moon of what Jupiter? Saturn?
I was a moon of Jupiter and it's the most
volcanically active world in the whole Solar system. So it's
(27:20):
got a lot of stuff going on, the most volcanically
active volcanoes Everywhere's a lot of stuff going on on
the inside of Io, and that also leads to tectonic activity.
And so this thing is actually a tectonic mountain on Io.
And it's eighteen kilometers high. So that's pretty impressive. It's
like twice the height of Mount Everest. Yeah, and I
(27:41):
was pretty impressed until I started reading about the moons
of Saturn. Now there's one moon of Saturn called Us
and this one is so weird. It's got a ridge
all the way around the equator that's twenty kilometers high.
It looks sort of like a like a walnut, you know,
like a spherical object with a ring around on the
edge of it, like a belt, Like it has a belt. Yeah,
(28:02):
it's like a like love handles, like love handles, maybe
it ate a bunch of other moods. And it goes
all the way around. It goes three quarters of the
way around, three quarters of the way around. Nobody understands it,
nobody knows why, nobody knows how. Like somebody squished the planet,
like took it from top to bottom and it squished
and like bulget out mountains in the middle. Definitely some
interesting history there. And you know, it's not a small feature.
(28:25):
It's twenty kilometers high, so and it would be all around,
so it's like Manukea plus mount Everest not even as
tall as and it would just you would see it
as this mountain range that just keeps going off into
the horizon in both directions. It's a really weird feature. Yeah.
All right, Well, we are getting closer to the biggest mountain,
(28:46):
the tallest mountain in the Solar System, and so we'll
we've we've we've come down to the final two and
so let's get into what they are, where they are,
and how tall they are. But first let's take a
quick break. All right, So we're talking about the tallest
(29:14):
mountain in the Solar System. Our first runner up for
tallest mountain is not here on Earth. It's not on
any Moon, it's not on Jupiter. It's actually on Mars. Yeah.
It's sort of amazing little Mars, right, It's much smaller
than Earth but has much bigger features. It's very dramatic.
And this mountain on Mars is the Olympus Mons and
(29:34):
it's almost twenty two kilometers high. I remember Mount Never
almost nine kilometers. Mount o Kea, our tallest volcano is
ten kilometers. This thing is too. It's basically called Mount Olympus,
like the Greek exactly. It definitely wins the Olympics of mountains.
It's enormous and it's and it's not just tall, right,
(29:57):
it's also it's also really big becau because there's not
that much gravity on Mars, and so it's sort of
flows and becomes really broad, and the whole mountain if
you look at like the edges of it, it goes
it's like the size of France. Wow, if you were
to walk from the tip to the base, it'd be
like walking from the center of France to the border. Yeah.
(30:17):
You can take like the outline of this mountain and
superimposed on France and you're like, yeah, that's about the
same side. Do you think that's cheating a little bit? Though?
Like if you have less gravity, does that is that
like steroids? Kind of in the Olympics that mountain rises
because it's like or you know how they it's easier
to run and the higher altitudes because there's less gravity.
You know, Yeah, I think people were thinking bigger planet,
(30:40):
bigger mountains, But you're right, smaller planet, less gravity, bigger features,
easier to maintain a big mountain, yeah, and easier to
build it up and easier to maintain it. Things don't
roll down as much. And so that's pretty impressive. That's
twenty one nine kilometers And it's volcanic, right, it's stuff
spewing out from the inside of Mars. Mars doesn't have
tectonic activity as far as we know, so volcanoes are impact.
(31:03):
Is the only way Mars could get up onto this list.
And this is a volcanic mountain, right, And so that's
the biggest mountain on a planet in the Solar System,
that's right. Like that's if you're just counting planets or moons,
that's it. Is this the biggest mont that's it. That's
the number one feature on a planet in the Solar System.
But but the most impressive is a really, really weird
(31:26):
feature is on an asteroid, an asteroid. It's not even
on a planet. It's not even on a planet. It's
not even on a moon. It's on an asteroid. There's
this one asteroid in the asteroid belt. It's pretty big
it's like five hundred kilometers wide, which is sizeable for
an asteroid, and it's got this feature on it from
(31:47):
an impact crater. And the the thing you have to understand
is that the crater itself is four hundred kilometers wa
wait wait what what? Wait? Wait? So how can it's
like the most of the asteroid is a crater. Yes,
the whole like back half of this thing, the south
pole is this thing is just a big crater. Like
this thing was totally rear ended and it didn't get
(32:08):
any insurance information because nobody fixed this thing up. Like
the whole back of this thing was just blown out
in a big crater. It's like it's like if you
take an apple and you take a giant bite out
of it, that's kind of what you get. Yeah. Yeah,
but it's even weirder because this impact happened like a
billion years ago. But the mountain is actually at the
center and that's something I don't understand at all. And
(32:30):
the mountain has this name, it's called Rhea Silva. And
the mountain at the center of this crater is twenty
two kilometers high, so it's like just taller than that
mountain on Mark. Wait. Wait, okay, so um. So, the
biggest mountain in the Solar System is not on a planet.
It's on an asteroid called what Vesta is the name
of the asteroid Vesta, and the asteroid is five kilometers wide.
(32:55):
It has a hole that's four d kilometers wide, and
in the middle of that whole is a mountain. It's
such a weird structor to think about it. There is
weird stuff out there in the Solar System, and that's
why I love these episodes, because like it's basically like
a bowl, like a flying bowl with a with a
mountain of guacamole in the middle, floating out in space.
If you had lunch yet, or hey, I think maybe
you should have a snack before these episodes. I need
(33:18):
another banana. It's pretty weird. I was looking at pictures
of this thing and it's definitely something weird to look at. Okay,
so if I google it, what does it look like.
It looks like a huge hole with a mountain in
the middle. It's just a flying hole with with a
pimple in the middle. And we've learned a lot about
Vesta actually because bits of it have fallen to Earth,
like this collision happened a billion years ago, and a
(33:40):
lot of the asteroids in the Asteroid belt used to
be bits of Vesta, and then some of them fell
to Earth, and like, you know, we can pick up
a rock here on Earth and we can be like,
this rock doesn't seem like it was formed on Earth.
It seems like the Moon, or it seems like Mars,
or it seems like this weird asteroid. And it's a
pretty cool way to explore the Solar System just by
finding little bits of it here on Earth. And it's
(34:01):
amazing we can track it, like this bit of of
I rack came from that asteroid bazillion miles away. Yeah,
because a lot of these have their own different history, right,
and that leads to different you know, fractions of ice
and different kinds of ice, and different kinds of rock
and different um you know, heavy metals and stuff. And
so from those sort of fingerprints you can tell where
a rock came from, which I think is amazing. And
(34:23):
so we found bits of Vesta. But Vesta, in my mind,
is the champ. It's just slightly edges out Mars, but
it is more impressive. Okay, So it has a feature
that looks like a mountain. That is a mountain, I
guess is a triangular is it? It's just a it's
a giant bump that peak two basse is Yeah, And
(34:44):
the edges of this crater are also very dramatic. They
don't quite rise twenty two kilometers, but they're you know,
on the same scale there in the teens. And you're
saying it's mostly made out of it's not made out
of rock. Yeah, it's like rock and mostly ice, right,
And there's people don't understand. There's a lot of ice
out there in the Solar System. It's huge chunks of it.
And like some of those outer planets are icy giants,
(35:04):
so there's an enormous amount of water frozen in ice
in the outer Solar System. We have no shortage of resources.
Like those movies where the aliens come to steal our water.
It's like, what are you doing? There's so much more
water out there. There's a bunch of ice tomorrow where
they're like sucking up our oceans with giant vacuums, and
I'm like, what so so that that means the biggest
(35:25):
mountain in the Solar System is mostly made out of ice,
mostly made out of ice, Yep, it's ice mountain, no kidding.
It's like you you can ski on it year round
for a long time. I don't know what a year
is like on Vesta, but probably probably. I don't think
the weather changes very much. And so this is out
than in the asteroid belt beyond kind of our planets
or in between our planet. It was in the inner
(35:47):
asteroid Bell. It's not out in the equiper belt, and
so it's not actually too far cool. Well, there you go.
That is the biggest mountain, the tallest mountain in the
Solar System. It's a meat out of ice and it's
in an asteroid, which is pretty amazing. Well, I think
we ran down the list, Daniel. We found our champion. Yes,
I think we did. We can crown it if we
could get to the topic. We can get to the
base of it. How do we even get there? All right? Well,
(36:11):
we hope you enjoyed a trip into extreme mountains. Thanks
for tuning in for these Extreme Universe episodes and keep
sending us your questions and suggestions. We love our listener mail.
Thanks for listening. See you next time. Before you still
(36:33):
have a question backdown listening to all these explanations. Please
drop us the line we'd love to hear from it.
You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
Daniel and Jorge That's one Word, or email us at
Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening,
and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explaining the Universe is
a production of I Heart Radio. More podcast from my
(36:55):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you thing to your favorite chips. M h m hmmmm.
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Daniel Whiteson
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