Here ’s an easy doubt for you : What ’s the tallest mountain in the world ? If you are suspicious of being asked such a seemingly dim-witted query , you would be correct to be come to , because the answer isnot of necessity Mount Everest .
At a tallness of 8,848 meters ( 29,029 foot ) above sea level , it lay other mountains on Earth to shame . However , if you measure this length out from the center of Earth , thanks to elevated gall near the equator , Ecuador’sChimborazois by far the “ tallest . ”
Measured above sea horizontal surface , it is only 6,268 meters ( 20,564 human foot ) gamey ; when withdraw from Earth ’s core , it is really 2,168 cadence ( 7,113 feet ) higher than Everest would be by this metric . This intend that although Everest may be the gamy peak on Earth , Chimborazo may in fact be the most large – intend that it “ stick out ” more than anything else .
Then there ’s the issue of Mauna Kea , a dormant volcano on theisland of Hawaii . At 4,207 time ( 13,803 ft ) above ocean level , it does n’t come close to either Everest of Chimborazo using this traditional system of measurement . If the water around it is removed , however , then the tiptop of this once furious mountain is actually around 9,330 beat ( 30,610 feet ) . Side by side , Mauna Kea trounce Everest .
The beautiful Mauna Kea , which is pretty darn grandiloquent once all the water is removed . Galyna Andrushko / Shutterstock
The reasonableness this sometime volcano is so high is because it is sitting on pelagic freshness , which is denser than the continental crust that Everest has emerged out of . This mean that , even with a massive glob of rock sit down on top of it , the former can not be compacted as much as the latter . finally , oceanic Earth’s crust can defend the weight of high flock than the continental cheekiness ever could .
In any case , this all pales in compare to the depths of the rich point in the ocean . The Challenger Deep , constitute south of the Nipponese archipelago , is 10,984 measure ( 36,036 feet ) below the surface of the ocean . At this depth , it is 2,136 meters ( 7,000 feet ) deeper than Mount Everest is tall .
But why give up at count at Earth ’s features ? Thanks to a now - extinguished stationary superheated mantle plume beneath the crust , the Olympus Mons shield volcano on Mars spend millennia piling lava period after lava flow on top of itself . Nowadays , the nonextant edifice is 21,229 meters ( 69,649 feet ) mellow , which is roughly 2.4 times the height of Everest .
A five - material body chronological succession of images from New Horizons that capture the gargantuan feather from Io ’s Tvashtar vent . NASA / JHU Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute .
speak of volcano , Io – the most volcanically active target ever discovered – is presently orb Jupiter and spewing out some unbelievably in high spirits plume of acrid textile . Thanks to explosive volcanic activity at the surface , a nearly non - existent ambiance supply almost zero opposition , and a low gravitational field posture , some of these plumes can progress to heights of 500 kilometers ( 311 miles ) .
These gloriously giant columns of volcanic fabric , some of which have been observed in actual - clock time as they begin to freeze into frigid watch glass in outer space , can check around 57 Mount Everests inside them . To the Solar System , Everest is a bare molehill .
