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Could the Olympus Mons, or a mountain of similar size, form on Earth?

Giuseppe Frisella
2 min readJan 6, 2024

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The Olympus Mons on Mars, is the tallest mountain in the entire solar system.

It is a shield volcano, of the same type as Hawaiian volcanoes, measuring 27 km high by 610 km in diameter, with a perimeter marked by a wall up to 6 km high. Its last activity may date to about 2 million years ago, and it may not necessarily be considered dormant today. The magma chamber is about 80x60 km, and more than 3 km deep.

The formation of such a colossus was possible because there is no tectonic on Mars, so the magma chamber always acts on the same spot, unlike on Earth. Hawaiian islands, for example, form an archipelago of volcanic islands for this very reason. The active volcano is the youngest, and it is on the largest island. The volcanoes on the other islands are off, because the shift in Earth’s crust caused by tectonics has caused the magma chamber to act on different points with the passage of time. The older islands are also smaller because the sea erodes them.

So no, no such volcano could form on Earth.

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Giuseppe Frisella
Giuseppe Frisella

Written by Giuseppe Frisella

I'm a curious person and I'm on Medium mainly to read and share thoughts and knowledge. I love science, especially physics and evolutionary biology.

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