Tallest mountains in the solar system

Mount Everest's got nothing on Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain in our solar system. At 15.5 miles high, it's also the largest volcano on Mars, covering the size of Arizona. Smithsonian listed the the top ten tallest mountains in the solar system. Earth barely made the list with Mauna Loa. And you thought Everest was our tallest? It's the highest peak, but mountain height is actually measured from base to peak and Everest's base is way above sea level. "The Tallest Mountains in the Solar System"

• [greebo]

  Okay, so you can’t measure height above sea level on planets that have no sea. But given how hard it is to establish where exactly the base of a mountain actually *is*, shouldn’t the right measure be the mountain whose peak is furthest from the centre of the planet? Which for earth would be….Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador

• [awjt]

  Or the most massive mountain, meaning that if you account for rotational deformation of the perfect sphere and then using a giant virtual planet-shaving lathe, which mountain would shed the most material?  That would most certainly be NJ Governor Chris Christie.

• [Ripcord2]

  It kills me how few people understand that the land covered by water is still land.  If you lowered the oceans by a few dozen meters you’d just…be able to see some more of the land easily.  Where we’re sitting is just where the land is slightly higher.  Those sandbox contintents you made by making some hills and then filling things up with water, well, those were a pretty good model!

  Like the military dudes that were worried that we were going to tip islands over by putting more military bases on obne side.  =)

  Just an example of how we can massively misunderstand things that we encounter every single day, because our brains fool us a little, and we’ve never bothered to really sit down and think about it.

  • [Phil Fot]

     Those confused idiots were elected representatives, not people in the military.

    • [Ripcord2]

      Ah, that’s right.  Although the military dude he was talking to never bothered to correct him or explain why it couldn’t happen.

      • [Phil Fot]

        The guy recognized a no win situation. What does he do? Embarrass the idiot? Promotions to flag rank require congressional approval. Anyone intending to stay for the stars wouldn’t want to piss them off.

        They should have asked some senior short-timer enlisted people about the issue. They’d have reamed him a new one.

• [Phil Fot]

  Ahem:

  “The highest point is Mount Lamlam with an elevation of 1,334 feet. The Peak of a submerged mountain, Guam, rises 37,820 feet above the floor of the Marianas Trench, the greatest ocean depth in the world.” 

• [Guest]

  So much that I learned as a child in science class has proven wrong…Pluto is a planet…Mt Everest is the tallest mountain, etc.

• [AA]

  Dirt skate heaven!!!

• [Halloween Jack]

  IIRC, the theory is that gravity actually limits the maximum height of mountains, so a planet with significantly heavier gravity than Earth couldn’t have Everest (or Mauna Loa, or Chimborazo).

  Also, Mars has a canyon that goes a quarter of the way around the planet.

• [DouglasLucchetti]

  From the standpoint of highest vertical expanse visible to the naked eye on earth, I think that the mountain that offers one of the greatest unbroken vertical rise visible in the world (even if it is not all that tall when compared to some others) would have to be the view looking south from the north of Mt McKinley in Denali National Park as seen on a clear day from the area around Wonder Lake which is a pretty famous image as it’s one of the late Ansel Adams’ most highly regarded photographs. The Muldrow Glacier at its snout is visible as it empties into the McKinley river at the base of the mountain and its elevation is approximately 600 feet above sea-level, and one can see an unbroken vertical expanse reaching up to 18,320 feet….over 3 miles of un-interupted vertical  elevation.