Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - What is the tallest mountain in the solar system?

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

Where is the biggest, tallest or widest mountain in the Solar System? Hint: it's not on any planet. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System

On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want or gone.

Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell. And the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen.

I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology's already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Jorge, you like the mountains, don't you? I used to drink Mountain Dew, yeah. I mean, do you like a climb. climbing mountains. Oh, I like skiing and hiking, yeah, and I like looking at great views.

All right, so then what's the tallest mountain you ever summited? Hmm, I've been to the top of El Capitan and Yosemite. How tall is that? That was like 3,000, 3,000 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, and the views were amazing. You know, everything looks so small.

Well, what have I told you that they were taller mountains out there? I mean, like Mount Everest? Oh, no, that's like a baby mountain. I'm talking much, much taller mountains. Will they taste as good as mountain do? Hi, I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Dana Weitson. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm a particle physicist, and I'm

learning how to live stream. And welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explained the universe, a production of IHeard 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 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 everyday, and we also look at the extremes of the universe,

all of 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 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 learn about the universe. We go to those places

where crazy things happen, and that shows us what is possible in the universe. Although thankfully, we don't live in one of those crazy places, right? 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. I don't think I need more mountain-do extremists. I bet if they offered, though, tours of neutron stars Ski down a slope on the mountains of Iowa, people would definitely do it. Yeah, the ski level would take 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, the biggest thing. What else did we do? We did the emptiest thing, the brightest things, the biggest explosions in the universe. There's a lot of ests 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 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 this or to try to wrap your head around things that are that big or that bright or that small. I think we've done smallest too, right? Yeah. Well, we don't know what the smallest thing is, right? It's the smallest thing so far. We've done the funniest fart joke. The biggest space banana.

Oh, wait, 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 biggest possible thing or the smallest thing and the hottest thing, it shows you what the universe can do. And 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. That's right. So today on the podcast, we'll be talking about one such extreme 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 have always lived near one of these things or in one of these things or I guess on. on one of these things. I started to imagine not having one around. You haven't lived under one. You haven't lived under one. That's where I'm going to retire. Yeah, that's my retirement plan. I see.

If things get any worse, that's where you're headed. The nearest bunker. But today on the podcast, we'll be asking the question. What is the biggest mountain in the solar system? The biggest or the tallest, Daniel? Yeah, I was going to ask you, are we doing big? or tallest? Like, do you want to know where's the highest point

sort of base 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, would that be the biggest?

Well, from a skiing point of view, you definitely would prefer tall and thin to 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 or like square mountains or like tall and skinny 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.

There are round mountains. There are square mountains. They're tall and thin and they're shorter and fatter mountains. We'll talk about it. But volcanic mountains can be pretty flat. And also, depending on the amount of gravity, the shape of volcanic mountain varies. 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 if you have a lot of gravity, it'll flatten the mountains. And you have less gravity, they'll be bigger. Yeah. Steeper. Yep. 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 champion. Okay, but on the podcast, I guess you're using tallest, like distance between the base of it to the peak of it.

I think base to peak is the best measurement. It 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 sea level. 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 great view. I see. What will give you the best perspective? Yeah, I guess. We're going for the views. We're going for the views. Yeah. But there's one more caveat, which is, what if part of the

mountain is underwater? Like, imagine an underwater mount with only a 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 the little tip. Then you get no views at all if you're standing in the clouds. So as, as you're, you know, As usual, the deeper we dive into a topic, the more we discover, it's fuzzy. Yeah. And the more bored, the audience, as we keep on discussing the definition of a mountain. But for the podcast, we're just going to go with, you know, I guess the base is, how do we define the base, just where it stops being a mountain? Yeah. And other mountains start.

Oh, man, you want to start a whole other conversation about where a mountain ends? Oh, geez. Man. 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 so that's the question we'll be asking today Is what is the tallest I will go with tallest

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

Tallus doesn't convey that God level impressiveness So we're at I'm asking, what is the tallest... What is the most confusing podcast in the solar system? What is 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 in the solar system? So I walked around campus at UC Irvine before it was shut down. And I asked people, where was the... tallest mountain in the solar system, and none of them, Jorge, you'll notice, gave me the flack 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 UC Irvine students. He said in the most positive, complimentary way possible. That's right, yeah. And so people had opinions about this. Think about it for a second. If someone asked you, where 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.

solar system? Maybe somewhere in Jupiter? I don't know. Probably not on Earth, but it might be. I'm assuming not early, so... What planet do you think is likely to have bigger mountains? Jupiter. All right, cool. The biggest mountain in the solar system? Oh, that's a hard question. I don't know if I could say for sure. I'm going to assume that a It's not on Earth, that's probably on a separate planet within our solar system. Yeah. So which planet do you think is most likely at the biggest map?

I'm going to say Mars. Mars? How come? I would assume based on how gases 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. Mars? Why do you think this, right?

I'm pretty sure I heard it somewhere. But does it make sense to you that Mars is the biggest mountain, given that it's like tectonically not active? Not totally sure. I guess I always just thought, even if it has less tectonic activity, Mars is a little smaller than Earth. So I guess conceivably, I don't know. Like in the Earth?

No, in the solar system. Oh, no. All right, if you have to guess. Mount Everest. And in Mars? Why do you say Mars? I know there's, I know the highest mountain over there. Olympics or something.

I forgot the name. All right, a lot of great guesses. I mean, nobody said, like, Mount Chasta in California. People went to other planets right away. They're like, it's on Mars, it's on Jupiter, it's Mount Everest. Yeah, 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, I imagine a triangular shape, Daniel. Is that how you start everything? Physicists start everything with a sphere. Engineers start everything with a triangle. No, like, you know, Jupiter, like, I don't, it doesn't have a surface. You can't really have mountains. It's not a rocky planet. I was wondering what was going through their minds

as they were saying Jupiter. Are they imagining... You mean Jupiter is mostly a gas planet? Yeah, I mean, it's got, you know, gas and then like metallic hydrogen oceans. And then at the very 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 about it. But isn't the core made out of like frozen gas?

Or like you said, metallic gas, couldn't you have mountains on 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 ocean of liquid hydrogen, like... Well, I guess 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 covered in liquid. 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. 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, Daniel? So it turns out...

What's the recipe for making a mountain? At rock stir, form it into a triangular shape. You start with your triangle cookie cutter. You get your triangle-shaped pan out. No, it turns out there are three ways to make a mountain, right? You are designing 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 tectonics, right?

That means you got these big plates of earth or whatever your mountain 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 were formed. 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. Like, I'm not saying whose fault it is, you know, but... They exchanged phone numbers, insurance information, and they're like, oh, look what we made.

China was right there. It's Mount Everest. And India just, like, ran right into it. I mean, I know who I'm siding with on that conflict. And so that's one way to make mountains is having plates crash into each other. But you can also make them other ways, right? Yeah, exactly. You can also build up a mountain by spewing up magma from underneath the earth.

Like you get a crack and the magma spews up. You get a volcano. The lava comes out and it builds up a mountain. And 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 of a mountain that starts at the bottom of the ocean.

Oh, you can grow a mountain too. Exactly. It's like a chia pet. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. And, you know, there's lots of famous volcanic mountains. You know, like Mount Vesuvius, right? It's a mountain, and it's there because it's been depositing lava

and building itself up year 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 sort of life cycle where they get taller and taller and taller, and they're pointy, and then they get sort of softer and roundy. Like, you can tell how old a mountain range is by how sharp and craggy it is. Like the rocky mountains are pretty young, whereas 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? No from like wind and rain. Yeah, weather, man. Oh, wow. Yeah, they just get worn down. They're old and old and busted. And the Rockies are the hot new mountains.

But the volcanic mountains, they're dynamic, right? Like they just keep adding more layers. You know, it's like that guy who keeps putting new rooms on his house. But they also collapse, right? because sometimes doesn't the lava create like cavities underneath and then they end up collapsing? 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. Okay, cool.

And so what are some other ways we can make mountains? All right. So then the last one is sort of my favorite way, which is you have... Is it aliens? Aliens could probably build mountains. Man, now we have four ways. There you go. What can aliens do?

No, 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 a planet and it creates a big collision and that can lead to mountains but wait i would imagine it just makes a big hole how can it make a mountain unless you you like create a hole and then you can count that as the base of where does the rock from the hole go um 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 look 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 base of the crater, but also

relative to the ground near it. Oh, right. So I guess the meteor or something falls or the aliens crash land. Aliens land, they're really big ship. Yeah. And then it pushes everything out and that's another way to create a mountain because you're pushing Earth. Yeah, and it's sort of weird. Like on one

hand, you're throwing rocks up into the air and that ejecta 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 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 who's a planetary scientist and he said the formation of these multiple rings is controversial. But there's some thought that they

They represent the imprints of seismic waves that propagate out from the impact point. Oh, so just like the shock wave. Yeah. It just somehow like pops mountains up. And then they freeze in place. Oh, wow. Pretty cool. It's pretty crazy.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy. I think you forgot aliens making snow angels. Giant aliens and lined down. I didn't forget it. I thought of it and rejected it because this is a science podcast. Okay. And not Jorge make stuff up. Did you actually consider it?

I thought Jorge will suggest this. I have to have a response. Right, right. Where are your references, Daniel? Prove to me that it's not possible. Okay, I'll go do 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. 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal.

Apparently the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and Order Criminal Justice System is back. In Season 2, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Oh, wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone.

Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professional. and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him?

Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire.

that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases. But everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it.

He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. And I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Dana, 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 mothership. You're being sponsored by the Mountain Dew of Venus? That's right. The extreme aliens.

Well, even if we begin here on Earth, there's already something of a controversy about what's the tallest mountain on our Earth. Really? You mean scientists can't agree on stuff? Well, I think it's actually engineers debating the details of definitions. Because your go-to answer is Mount Everest, right? It's like 8.8 kilometers above sea level. It's the highest point on Earth, right? Highest 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 it's 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 it was quite a collision India into China I think that was actually still happening like I think Mount Everest is getting taller every year wow is that true yeah it actually grows about a quarter inch every year and that's because this 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 rock is just going up and up and up. But wait, isn't sea levels also going up? So isn't that erasing some of that tallness?

That is a very good point. Climate change is going to bring down Mount Everest. Wow. That's maybe the least important consequence of climate change. Unfortunately. But there's another contender, right? There's another contender, which is Manuquea. Manuquea is a volcanic mountain in the Pacific.

and it's only 4.2 kilometers of a sea level, but that's because most of it's underwater. If you went from the tip of Mano Kea down to the base at the bottom of the ocean floor, that's more than 10 kilometers. Wow. So that's a whole kilometer and a half, bigger than Mount Everest.

I know. It would look down to Mount Everest and laugh at how pathetic it is. Well, it's Hawaiian, so it's probably pretty chill. It would be pretty friendly. That's true. It's a goddess. It's the goddess of lava,

So it would probably be, you know, be like, yay. Yeah. So I bet Hawaiians out there think of Manukaya as the tallest mountain or the biggest mountain. Also, it's definitely wider. Like, these volcanic mountains tend to be pretty wide because the lava doesn't just pile up in one spot, right? It flows.

So, but going back to our 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 base to peak. Base to peak, Manuquea, hands down, biggest mountain on Earth. Okay, so that's here on Earth. It's the biggest mountain we have here on Earth. It's bigger than anything else. There's no bigger feature on this planet.

On this planet, that's right. That's the best we could do. All right. Now let's go into other planets in the solar system. And let's start, I guess, with the one pluses of the sun. What's going on in Mercury? How big are the mountains in 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 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 Cholores Montes.

And it has these rings around the edge of it that are three kilometers above the planes. Oh, I guess there's no sea level in Mercury. Is there just third level? There's no sea level, yeah, exactly. It's, well, we're just doing base to peak, right? So sea levels are relevant. So base 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 at pretty tall it's like um as big as mount akea above sea level almost as high above sea level as manakea is yeah and it's much narrower right these impact mountains or these impact features whatever you want to call them are much narrower because they they come from these explosions they're more like shards right they're not built up slowly oh they're more dramatic yes

they're very dramatic all right so that's mercury what about venus what does venus have This is pretty impressive. It has tectonic activity, and its tallest mountain is called the Skatee 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 at once had a nice tempered climate, maybe even oceans, and then, And it was hit by a huge meteor that caused basically climate change and a runaway greenhouse effect that heated it up. And now the atmosphere is crazy. And it's like 900 degrees on the surface of Venus. Wow. And so the surface of this mountain is covered in metallic snow, flakes of lead that have precipitated. Metallic lead, snow.

What? Snow made of flakes of lead. Yeah. Now, talk about extreme skiing. Hey. That's like a quatrum. black diamond right there with a couple of crossbones just to make sure you don't ski on those. Yeah, it's a lead diamond. And it's hard to understand like the weather on the surface because

not only is it really hot. So you imagine other 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. 900 degrees. It's also super high pressure. It's really high pressure. So yeah, not a good place. I do not recommend skiing on Venus. Cancel that ski vacation. Yeah, everything we've sent to the surface of Venus, like, has lasted for, you know, minutes and then been crushed. Clashed.

Yeah. Because the... Because of the pressure. All right. But still, that's a pretty big mountain. 6.4 kilometers, and it's tectonic. And 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 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 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. Yeah, 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. 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 would 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 you have bigger mountains. Not necessarily. How about tallest mountains? Triangulist mountains. Square mountains. All right.

Well, take us to somewhere else in the solar system. Where else can we find big mountains? Apparently, we can have mountains, not just on planets. We can also have them on moons. Yeah, we can have them on the moons. So our moon has a pretty impressive feature.

It's Monz-Huygens, 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 250 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 them in a ring? Can you see them 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 our moon is not the only moon with mountains. That's right. And they get harder and harder to pronounce. And if you get further out. I guess I never thought of it. Does our moon have a name or is it just the moon?

Our moon is called Luna, and our sun is called Sol. In Spanish, did you just make that up? I know that it's soul has the name of our sun, but I'd never heard our moon called Luna. No, it's called Luna. Check it. Nice. But the moon Io has a feature called, ooh, boy, Bousal Montes, and it's 18 kilometers high. What?

Yes, 18 kilometers. So it, like, blows away Mount Everest, blows away Monocale. So Io is a moon of, what, Jupiter, Saturn? Io is a moon of Jupiter, and it's the most volcanically active world in the whole solar system. So it's got a lot of stuff going on. It's the most volcanically active. There's volcanoes everywhere. There'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 18 kilometers high. So that's pretty impressive. That's like twice the height of Mount Everest. Yeah. And I was pretty impressed until I started reading about the moons of Saturn. Now, there's one moon of Saturn called Yopidas, and this one is so weird. It's got a ridge all the way around the equator that's 20 kilometers high. It looks sort of like a walnut, you know, like a spherical object with a ring around the edge of it.

Like a belt, like it has a belt. Yeah, it's like a belt. Or like love handles. Like love handles. Maybe it ate a bunch of other moons, who knows. 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 it like bulged out mountains in the middle. There's definitely some interesting history there. And, you know, it's not a small feature. It's 20 kilometers high.

So, and it would be all around. So it's like Manukea plus Mount Everest, not even as tall as this thing. And it would just, you would see it as this mountain range that just keeps going off into the horizon in both directions. Wow, that'd be pretty cool. It's a really weird feature. Yeah. All right. Well, we are getting closer to the biggest mountain, the tallest mountain in the solar system. And so 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. Parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed.

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That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Well, wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone.

Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him

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season 12, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so we're talking about the tallest mountains And 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 it has much bigger features. It's very dramatic. And this mountain on Mars, it's the Olympus Mons, and it's almost 22 kilometers high.

Wow. Remember, Mount Everest, almost nine kilometers. Mano Kea, our tallest volcano, is 10,000. This thing is two Monarchais. It's basically called Mount Olympus, like the Greek gods. Yeah, exactly. It definitely wins the Olympics of mountains. It's enormous.

It's the Olympics. And it's not just tall, right? It's also really big because there's not that much gravity on Mars. And so it 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, you can take like the outline of this mountain and superimposed it on France, and you're like, yeah, that's about the same size.

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 of mountain sizes? Because it's like, or you know how they, it's easier to hit a home run in the higher altitudes because there's less gravity, you know? Yeah, I think people were thinking bigger planet, 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 yeah things don't roll down as much and so that's pretty impressive that's 21.9 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 or impact 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. If you're just counting planets or moons, that's it. Is this the biggest mountain? 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 feature. It's 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 500 kilometers wide, which is sizable for an asteroid. And it's got this feature on it from an impact crater. And the thing you have to understand is that the crater itself is 400 kilometers wide. Wait, wait, wait. So how can, it's like most of the asteroid is a crater? Yes, the whole like back half of this thing, the South Pole of this thing, is just a big crater. Like this thing was totally rear-ended and it didn't. get 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 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. What? And that's

something I don't understand at all. And the mountain has this name. It's called Ria Silva. And the mountain at the center of this crater is 22 kilometers high. So it's like just taller than that mountain on Mars. Wait, wait. Okay. 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. Vesta. And the asteroid is 500 kilometers wide. It has a hole that's 400 kilometers wide. And in the middle of that hole

is a mountain. This is such a weird structure 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 ball with a with a mountain of guacamole in the middle kind of floating out in space have you had lunch yet hori i think maybe you should have a snack before these episodes i need another banana it's pretty weird i was looking at pictures of this thing and it's definitely something weird to look at oh 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 a pimple in the middle and we've learned a lot about vesta actually because bits of it have fallen to Earth. This collision happened a billion years ago, and a 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 amazing we can track it. Like, this bit of a rock 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, 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 so we found bits of Vesta, yeah. 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 it triangular? is it, it's just a, it's a giant bump. And that peak to base is 22 kilometers. Yeah. And the edges of this crater are also very dramatic. They don't quite rise 22 kilometers,

but they're on the same scale. They're in the teens. And you're saying it's mostly made out of, it's not made out of rock. Yeah, it's like 20% rock and mostly ice, right? And there's people don't understand. There's a lot of ice out there in the solar system. There's huge chunks of it.

And like some of those outer planets are icy giants. 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 over there. It's not the day after tomorrow where they're like sucking up our oceans with giant vacuums. And I'm like, what?

So that means the biggest mountain in the solar system is mostly made out of ice. It's mostly made out of ice. Yep. It's ice mountain. No kidding. It's like you can ski on it year own. 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 in the asteroid belt beyond kind of our planets or in between our planet? No, it's in the inner asteroid belt. It's not out in the Kuiper 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 made 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 top of it. If we can get to the base of it. I mean, how do we even get there? All right. Well, we hope you enjoyed that 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. and after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line we'd love to hear from there.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy. emerged. Terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order criminal justice system on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way

too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem. him, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems

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