And when the Appalachians started forming, the St. Francois Mountains in southern Missouri were already twice as old as the Appalachians are today. They're 1.485 billion years old.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St.\_Francois\_Mountains](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Francois_Mountains)
The Makhonjwa Mountains in South Africa are 3.5 billion years old. That blew my mind when I visited them. As nice as they were, I can only imagine how majestic they were before literally billions of years of erosion.
It wouldn’t be billions of years of erosion. Often, rocks are exposed above ground for a very short amount of time compared with how old they are. Like the Adirondacks in NY are over a billion year old rocks but only on the surface for 10-15 million years.
No, the last try at multicellular life is pretty young. But it isn't the first attempt.
There are microfossils pointing at multicellular life dating back 2,1-2,2 billion years. Apparently, the life tried to get going already back then... and then [something else ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vredefort_impact_structure)in the solar system decided to go "no you fucking don't".
I always thought the John Denver song was hyperbole.
Totally didn't realize it was possible for something to be older than the trees and younger than the mountain.
Interesting. Just looked it up. 3 of the top 5 oldest rivers in the world cut through the Appalachians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_by_age
This thing all things devours;
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats mountain down.
His statement is true and eventually Everest itself will sustain that level of erosion obviously not for a great amount of time but will happen. It’s something to do with the plates and that Everest is at its peak height and may continue to get a little taller or something I forget but then eventually will start to erode to just natural forces and plate movement!
Erosion and subsidence. The massive concentrated weight of the mountain range pushes the crust back down, once the tectonic forces that created them are no longer active
Same with the mountains of Ireland, Scottish Highlands and the Norwegian mountains, they were all once part of the same tectonic uplift essentially once being thr same mountain range.
According to the USGS, they were likely higher than the Rockies.
https://www.usgs.gov/geology-and-ecology-of-national-parks/geology-great-smoky-mountains-national-park
Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina is the highest peak east of the Mississippi River. So to my understanding, Mt. Mitchell was taller than Everest at one time. That's awesome.
There's a maximum limit where the rock can't support its own weight..that's why Mars' Mount Olympus is taller because the gravity is 38% of earth's. Mars is slightly less dense tho.
Height x density x gravity.
Not really. It has a ring of cliffs up to 3 km high at the base, and a slope above that is as steep as any stratovolcano on earth (e.g in Hawaii). It just has a vast plain on top.
Really interesting [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/s/PnsrU4qYCp) here from an old post. Short answer is that Everest (or something similar) is just about the tallest we can see on Earth. Olympus Mons or anything like that is not really possible on earth due to a host of factors
If Mars had active plate tectonics Olympus Mons simply wouldn't exist. Or at least, if it was formed by a mantle plume, it should have left a trail of volcanoes behind followind the direction of plate motion. Also there are no visible subduction zones or spreading ridges
We sent a probe to mars a few years ago to study tectonic activity. Also it has no magnetosphere, which IIRC indicates a dead core, which means no tectonic activity.
Ken Jennings wrote an in-depth article about this for Condé Nast.
https://www.cntraveler.com/story/appalachian-mountains-may-have-once-been-as-tall-as-the-himalayas#:~:text=Estimating%20that%20volume%2C%20geologists%20believe,Appalachia%2C%20it's%20a%20different%20story.
An interesting fact is Everest is the highest peak over sealevel. But is not the tallest mountain over the terrain below it which is Mauna Kea in Hawaii
And the highest point from the earth's core is Mount Chimborazo in Equador. This is because the earth is wider at the equator and this mountain is almost on the equator.
When I feel like having a pointless debate, I may bring up that Everest isn't the tallest. Furthest from Earth's core, closest to the stars, etc. *that's* what should matter.
But no one hiking Everest is hiking from sea level, they’re flying to airports at 4000 (KTM) or 9000 ft (LUA) in elevation, so the relation to hiking and sea level is basically irrelevant.
Chimborazo. If you were to imagine a dot in the center of Earth's core, Chimborazo is farther from that point than Everest is. Therefore, as the farthest point from the center, the peak of Chimborazo is the closest point on Earth's surface to the "outside"
This is because Chimborazo is on the equator, and Earth is not a sphere. It is an ellipsoid that is wider around the equator by at 43 km.
I don’t think the part about Mauna Kea is true. The summit of Mauna Kea is only like 13,803 feet. Denali on the other hand has a summit of 20,301 feet and a base of only 2,000 feet.
“With its summit at 20,310 feet above sea level, Denali is without a doubt the tallest mountain in North America. Its base is 2,000 feet above sea level, meaning it measures over 18,300 feet from base to peak – roughly the equivalent of three and a half miles, according to the National Park Service.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2023/03/21/worlds-tallest-mountain/11504402002/#:~:text=With%20its%20summit%20at%2020%2C310,to%20the%20National%20Park%20Service.
Denali is Americas highest above sea level. Mauna Kea is *tallest* overall, measuring 10.2km (33,500 ft) from its base over the ocean floor to its summit at 13,800 feet above sea level.
Though I haven’t seen Everest in person, I have seen lots of other mountains all across the U.S. west coast - and Denali is breathtakingly huge. It makes the 14,000+ peaks in Colorado look like anthills (which makes sense when you’re viewing them from 5-8,000ft to start).
I imagine that Everest and other peaks are also incredibly impressive, but I’ll never forget going into the park and seeing Denali for the first time.
I want to believe. I also like the idea of a random volcano existing millions of years ago, over a hotspot in the ocean, and it grew so rapidly and massive that it ended up being like 40,000 ft, and then exploded Krakatoa style and vanished, and then the hotspot closed up and we’ll never know.
There have probably been so many cool Hawaiis.
Like, the big island is only half a million years old. The oldest of the main islands, Kauai, is only 5 million years old.
Earth could have been pumping out so many of these bad boys over the past couple billion years. So many funky island bird, fish and plant species, completely lost to time 🥲
Probably yes, but no way to know. The highest a mountain on earth could get, in theory, is estimated to be about 15,000 meters (49,300 feet). See:
https://www.yourweather.co.uk/news/science/what-is-maximum-height-mountain-can-reach-earth-geography.html
The height of the mountains is limited by two factors - plastic crust deformation by the weight of the mountain, and glacier erosion. A mountain that is pushed up too high sinks back into the crust due to its own weight, and above a certain altitude the glaciers form and rub the mountains away. And of course both the growth of a mountain range by plate collision, and sinking by plastic deformation, are slow process, so the faster the colliding masses move the higher the mountains can grow.
If the base rock is particularly low density, like e.g. dolomite, it can be pushed up higher than something heavy like dunite/basalt, before the mass of the mountain lets the crust below the mountain flow away. The glacier formation depends very much on the climate, i.e. if the mountain range sits in the middle of a vast desert, it's going to catch much less rain and snow and the glacier erosion is much smaller, and again the mountains can grow taller.
Himalayas are in a favourable spot regarding the first point (very fast collision, light minerals) but being in the monsoon zone, the precipitation is very high and the second limit hits hard.
actually the chimborazos top is farer away from the center of the earth than mt. everest top is. therefore one expected the chimborazo as the tallest mountain in 18th/19th century.
The mountains of the southern Canadian Shield, now known as the Laurentians, would have likely been higher than the Himalayas. Over a billion years of weathering has brought them down to be largely Appalachian/Adirondack level at their highest.
I‘m fairly sure I have read once that the Appalachian Mountains in and around the area of todays NYC are presumed to having been around 10 kilometres tall but they since have been eroded for the most part. That’s one of the reasons why you can build skyscrapers exceptionally well on Manhattan, you don’t need to dig deep to reach bedrock.
I don’t think mountains could reach much higher than that though. At some point they’d weigh too much and begin to sink into the ground.
The reality is that we can’t say for certain how tall prehistoric mountain ranges were but only make educated guesses. Even if we were to narrow it down for certain to this precise range, the tallest peak could have been anywhere in todays US, Canada, Morocco or Scotland since the breakup of Pangea split it into many parts.
As a side note, Mt. Everest actually isn’t the tallest mountain on earth but the highest peak (and even that isn’t exactly true since Earth isn’t a sphere, the real highest peak would be Mt. Chimborazo due to its proximity to the equator). Mauna Kea of Hawaii when measured in total is around 10km tall it’s just that 6 of those are below the water. Even more interesting is that the mountain is so big and heavy that its root lies another 7km below the ocean’s ground, making it roughly 17km from root to peak. As you can see there isn’t a definite way of defining the tallest mountain on earth.
When measured from the base of the sea floor, Mauna Kea in Hawaii is higher than Mt Everest.
[https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-big-are-hawaiian-volcanoes](https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-big-are-hawaiian-volcanoes)
You’ve accidentally stumbled upon the debate of what does it mean for a mountain to be tall. Everest is often called the tallest because its peak is the highest point on earth. Then there is how tall the mountain is from base to peak, which is a different measurement. In that sense, you are correct as Denali is 5,000 feet taller than when measured from their respective bases, but the summit of Everest is ~8,700 feet higher above sea level than Denali’s peak.
Higher above sea level. But there is actually another mountain whose peak is further from earth's core.
It is Mount Chimborazo, the earth is a bit squashed and is wider at the equator and sea level is further from the core there than closer to the polls.
There are mountains under the oceans that are significantly taller and wider than Mt Everest. In fact there are at least two; one for sure that dwarfs Mt Everest. These are in the Pacific. Perhaps a long time ago these were above ground. It's also possible these may be above water at some point in the future.
Interestingly, depending on how one measures it, Mt. Everest is not currently the highest point on Earth. If we define "height" as the distance from the centre of the Earth then that title belongs to Mount Chimborazo. It's only when we define "height" as height above the average level of the sea (i.e. sea level) that Everest takes the prize.
Source: [https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/highestpoint.html](https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/highestpoint.html)
So this is purely speculative, but Olympus Mons on Mars is over 20km high, that’s with drastically less erosion, and roughly 1/3rd the gravity. I would doubt anything on earth could get over 10km for long, maybe at one point there was a 15km high volcano for some time before collapsing.
It depends on what you mean and how you measure it. Mauna Kea is 33,500 feet from base to peak. Mount Chimborazo's peak is about 6,800 feet further from the center of the earth than the peak of Everest is. Everest is the tallest only when measured from average sea level.
I believe the Canadian Shield used to be a massive mountain that was significantly larger than Everest and probably could have been the tallest mountain in geological history
Are you asking if Mt. Everest is the tallest ever mountain or if there were other mountains that were taller than Mt. Everest at the time. My understanding is that Mt. Everest is growing so it would not surprise me if it is growing faster than some other mountains.
Unlikely. Everest isn't even currently the closest mountain to space as that honor goes to Mt Chimborazo in Ecuador . . . .the earth bulges around the equator so mountains at or near it get extra oomph when it comes to being close to space even if they fall slightly behind in sea level measurements. Or put another way sea level at the equator isn't the same as sea level elsewhere.
I remember reading that the Appalachians were once higher than Mt. Everest.
I know they’re ancient, but that is some serious erosion.
The Appalachian mountains are older than trees.
Older than bones. They are an eldritch being.
And when the Appalachians started forming, the St. Francois Mountains in southern Missouri were already twice as old as the Appalachians are today. They're 1.485 billion years old. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St.\_Francois\_Mountains](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Francois_Mountains)
This thread is a treasure trove of TIL's
[Remnants of the Appalachians are in the sands of Arizona](https://canyonsandchefs.com/blog/how-was-the-wave-in-arizona-formed/)
I think the Scottish highlands were also once a part.
So basically American hillbilly’s were Scots Irish just going home
I guess there's something to be said about both cultures affinity to brown liquor.
Hillbilly’s have Scottish ancestors.
Considering the Appalachians were once as tall as the Himalayas, imagine Li'l Abner or The Dukes of Hazzard being set in the Himalayas.
They are indeed. Appalachians up through Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Scotland.
Along with the Atlas Mountains in NW Africa.
Wtf?!
My ancestors “left” the Scottish Highlands and ended up in the Appalachians. Go figure.
Also the Atlas Mountains of Morocco.
The lore goes deeper
The Makhonjwa Mountains in South Africa are 3.5 billion years old. That blew my mind when I visited them. As nice as they were, I can only imagine how majestic they were before literally billions of years of erosion.
It wouldn’t be billions of years of erosion. Often, rocks are exposed above ground for a very short amount of time compared with how old they are. Like the Adirondacks in NY are over a billion year old rocks but only on the surface for 10-15 million years.
Funny how it describes the Rockies as being a “mere” 140 million years old.
Literally a billion years older than the Appalachians. Wow.
Hell yeah! Elephant Rocks and Johnson Shut-ins ftw!
That’s absolutely one of the strangest things I have ever read. That’s wild.
Bones are pretty young though. Hell multicellular life is pretty young.
No, the last try at multicellular life is pretty young. But it isn't the first attempt. There are microfossils pointing at multicellular life dating back 2,1-2,2 billion years. Apparently, the life tried to get going already back then... and then [something else ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vredefort_impact_structure)in the solar system decided to go "no you fucking don't".
Cultists roads, take me home...
To the place ,i belong
Growin’ like a breeze
I always thought the John Denver song was hyperbole. Totally didn't realize it was possible for something to be older than the trees and younger than the mountain.
The new river in the Appalachian’s predates the formation of the range.
Interesting. Just looked it up. 3 of the top 5 oldest rivers in the world cut through the Appalachians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_by_age
This hurt my brain to think about.
Same is true of the Colorado. Really gives you an idea of the pace of typical orogeny.
Poorly named river.
Well it’s new to me.
Apparently this sub sucks #COUNTRY ROAD
Sharks are also older than trees
Country road...
Yeah that’s what a few hundred million years of wind will do to a mountain peak
This thing all things devours; Birds, beasts, trees, flowers; Gnaws iron, bites steel; Grinds hard stones to meal; Slays king, ruins town, And beats mountain down.
That’s a precious riddle
Dark, too.
Yessssss
Damn fuck wind I’m never going in it willingly again
Water is probably more of an eroder in this sense
His statement is true and eventually Everest itself will sustain that level of erosion obviously not for a great amount of time but will happen. It’s something to do with the plates and that Everest is at its peak height and may continue to get a little taller or something I forget but then eventually will start to erode to just natural forces and plate movement!
the Indian subcontinent is pushing itself into Asia
That’s why they look like tall rolling hills while the newer mountains are all jagged and pointy
Erosion and subsidence. The massive concentrated weight of the mountain range pushes the crust back down, once the tectonic forces that created them are no longer active
Erosions' a helluva drug
In 80 million years the Himalayas will be completely gone. Considering that should put things in perspective for you a little bit
Where they goin?
Why the east coast and gulf have decent beaches. /s
As was the area now near the Grand Canyon
Same with the mountains of Ireland, Scottish Highlands and the Norwegian mountains, they were all once part of the same tectonic uplift essentially once being thr same mountain range.
And the Atlas range in Africa!
Now just the people who live in Appalachia are higher than Mount Everest
According to the USGS, they were likely higher than the Rockies. https://www.usgs.gov/geology-and-ecology-of-national-parks/geology-great-smoky-mountains-national-park
Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina is the highest peak east of the Mississippi River. So to my understanding, Mt. Mitchell was taller than Everest at one time. That's awesome.
It may not have been the tallest peak back then, since erosion isn’t necessarily even. But still, yeah, it probably was taller than Everest!
It's a possibility that Grandfather Mountain was taller. If only we had a time machine...
I’ve been higher than that as recently as last night 😎
Was ist once taller than it the mt Everest is now or at the time taller?
There's a maximum limit where the rock can't support its own weight..that's why Mars' Mount Olympus is taller because the gravity is 38% of earth's. Mars is slightly less dense tho. Height x density x gravity.
also olympus mons has a 600 km base, so the slope is just 0.2°. you would basically feel like you stand on a plane.
Not really. It has a ring of cliffs up to 3 km high at the base, and a slope above that is as steep as any stratovolcano on earth (e.g in Hawaii). It just has a vast plain on top.
Really depends on how high the plane is in the air. Or how wide the plane is. Is it in take off?
Aw I appreciated your joke Jim
Thanks!
Is that an accepted geologic formula? Or just common sense?
It's the formula for pressure exerted at a certain depth, so it's a legitimate formula.
It’s part of the reason the Appalachian mountains are much shorter than they used to be, they have sunk into the mantle somewhat.
Just a general rule.
Really interesting [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/s/PnsrU4qYCp) here from an old post. Short answer is that Everest (or something similar) is just about the tallest we can see on Earth. Olympus Mons or anything like that is not really possible on earth due to a host of factors
Fantastic link, thank you. Anytime I can read “glacial buzzsaw” I have to excuse myself to the bathroom.
Isn’t the biggest reason gravity? Mars has significantly lower gravity so there’s far less force pulling Olympus Mons down.
Mars doesn’t have moving tectonic plates, so volcanic activity is able to continually happen at the same location virtually indefinitely.
How do we know that? Do we know that?
If Mars had active plate tectonics Olympus Mons simply wouldn't exist. Or at least, if it was formed by a mantle plume, it should have left a trail of volcanoes behind followind the direction of plate motion. Also there are no visible subduction zones or spreading ridges
We sent a probe to mars a few years ago to study tectonic activity. Also it has no magnetosphere, which IIRC indicates a dead core, which means no tectonic activity.
Kinda sad… very cool
You wish Mars had tectonic plates?
Everyone deserves a little friction
We know that.
Ken Jennings wrote an in-depth article about this for Condé Nast. https://www.cntraveler.com/story/appalachian-mountains-may-have-once-been-as-tall-as-the-himalayas#:~:text=Estimating%20that%20volume%2C%20geologists%20believe,Appalachia%2C%20it's%20a%20different%20story.
I'm pretty sure that guy knows literally everything.
He’s incredible. I’m a huge fan.
An interesting fact is Everest is the highest peak over sealevel. But is not the tallest mountain over the terrain below it which is Mauna Kea in Hawaii And the highest point from the earth's core is Mount Chimborazo in Equador. This is because the earth is wider at the equator and this mountain is almost on the equator.
When I feel like having a pointless debate, I may bring up that Everest isn't the tallest. Furthest from Earth's core, closest to the stars, etc. *that's* what should matter.
Well they all matter in different contexts. Considering humans live on land, the highest point above sea level is worth focusing on
But no one hiking Everest is hiking from sea level, they’re flying to airports at 4000 (KTM) or 9000 ft (LUA) in elevation, so the relation to hiking and sea level is basically irrelevant.
Could you please explain which mountain is closest the stars?
Chimborazo. If you were to imagine a dot in the center of Earth's core, Chimborazo is farther from that point than Everest is. Therefore, as the farthest point from the center, the peak of Chimborazo is the closest point on Earth's surface to the "outside" This is because Chimborazo is on the equator, and Earth is not a sphere. It is an ellipsoid that is wider around the equator by at 43 km.
Being further from the center of the earth doesn't make it closer to the stars though.
I don’t think the part about Mauna Kea is true. The summit of Mauna Kea is only like 13,803 feet. Denali on the other hand has a summit of 20,301 feet and a base of only 2,000 feet. “With its summit at 20,310 feet above sea level, Denali is without a doubt the tallest mountain in North America. Its base is 2,000 feet above sea level, meaning it measures over 18,300 feet from base to peak – roughly the equivalent of three and a half miles, according to the National Park Service.” https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2023/03/21/worlds-tallest-mountain/11504402002/#:~:text=With%20its%20summit%20at%2020%2C310,to%20the%20National%20Park%20Service.
Denali is Americas highest above sea level. Mauna Kea is *tallest* overall, measuring 10.2km (33,500 ft) from its base over the ocean floor to its summit at 13,800 feet above sea level.
👍
Though I haven’t seen Everest in person, I have seen lots of other mountains all across the U.S. west coast - and Denali is breathtakingly huge. It makes the 14,000+ peaks in Colorado look like anthills (which makes sense when you’re viewing them from 5-8,000ft to start). I imagine that Everest and other peaks are also incredibly impressive, but I’ll never forget going into the park and seeing Denali for the first time.
I’ve heard the same. It’s on another level entirely.
The summit of Mauna Kea is 13,000 feet above what base level? We are saying if you measure from the sea floor how tall is it?
Ok, but you’re not also counting how far Denali extends into the sea…. 😎 I’m joking of course.
Well yeah if you counted from the same point. Like whatever the depth is at big island then add that to the height of denali or everest
No joke I read somewhere that the Canadian Shield used to have mountains around 40,000 feet.
I want to believe. I also like the idea of a random volcano existing millions of years ago, over a hotspot in the ocean, and it grew so rapidly and massive that it ended up being like 40,000 ft, and then exploded Krakatoa style and vanished, and then the hotspot closed up and we’ll never know.
There have probably been so many cool Hawaiis. Like, the big island is only half a million years old. The oldest of the main islands, Kauai, is only 5 million years old. Earth could have been pumping out so many of these bad boys over the past couple billion years. So many funky island bird, fish and plant species, completely lost to time 🥲
There are a bunch of underwater sea mounts that used to be Hawaiian islands
They go all the way to Russia and subduct under the Eurasian plate
I like how on this sub, on the rare instances where the Canadian Shield comes up seriously in the comments, you now have to precise its not a joke
Maybe they predate Earth's atmosphere and erosion wasn't quite as intense, or something like that?
Yes, I was told this fact by my geography professor a few years ago as well.
Grenville
Probably yes, but no way to know. The highest a mountain on earth could get, in theory, is estimated to be about 15,000 meters (49,300 feet). See: https://www.yourweather.co.uk/news/science/what-is-maximum-height-mountain-can-reach-earth-geography.html
The height of the mountains is limited by two factors - plastic crust deformation by the weight of the mountain, and glacier erosion. A mountain that is pushed up too high sinks back into the crust due to its own weight, and above a certain altitude the glaciers form and rub the mountains away. And of course both the growth of a mountain range by plate collision, and sinking by plastic deformation, are slow process, so the faster the colliding masses move the higher the mountains can grow. If the base rock is particularly low density, like e.g. dolomite, it can be pushed up higher than something heavy like dunite/basalt, before the mass of the mountain lets the crust below the mountain flow away. The glacier formation depends very much on the climate, i.e. if the mountain range sits in the middle of a vast desert, it's going to catch much less rain and snow and the glacier erosion is much smaller, and again the mountains can grow taller. Himalayas are in a favourable spot regarding the first point (very fast collision, light minerals) but being in the monsoon zone, the precipitation is very high and the second limit hits hard.
actually the chimborazos top is farer away from the center of the earth than mt. everest top is. therefore one expected the chimborazo as the tallest mountain in 18th/19th century.
The mountains of the southern Canadian Shield, now known as the Laurentians, would have likely been higher than the Himalayas. Over a billion years of weathering has brought them down to be largely Appalachian/Adirondack level at their highest.
I‘m fairly sure I have read once that the Appalachian Mountains in and around the area of todays NYC are presumed to having been around 10 kilometres tall but they since have been eroded for the most part. That’s one of the reasons why you can build skyscrapers exceptionally well on Manhattan, you don’t need to dig deep to reach bedrock. I don’t think mountains could reach much higher than that though. At some point they’d weigh too much and begin to sink into the ground. The reality is that we can’t say for certain how tall prehistoric mountain ranges were but only make educated guesses. Even if we were to narrow it down for certain to this precise range, the tallest peak could have been anywhere in todays US, Canada, Morocco or Scotland since the breakup of Pangea split it into many parts. As a side note, Mt. Everest actually isn’t the tallest mountain on earth but the highest peak (and even that isn’t exactly true since Earth isn’t a sphere, the real highest peak would be Mt. Chimborazo due to its proximity to the equator). Mauna Kea of Hawaii when measured in total is around 10km tall it’s just that 6 of those are below the water. Even more interesting is that the mountain is so big and heavy that its root lies another 7km below the ocean’s ground, making it roughly 17km from root to peak. As you can see there isn’t a definite way of defining the tallest mountain on earth.
When measured from the base of the sea floor, Mauna Kea in Hawaii is higher than Mt Everest. [https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-big-are-hawaiian-volcanoes](https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-big-are-hawaiian-volcanoes)
When measured from the base of the sea floor, Mt Everest is higher than Mauna Kea.
But Everest doesn't rise from the sea floor. Ir rises from surrounding terrain well above sea level.
By that measure, Mt Denali is taller than Everest, then
You’ve accidentally stumbled upon the debate of what does it mean for a mountain to be tall. Everest is often called the tallest because its peak is the highest point on earth. Then there is how tall the mountain is from base to peak, which is a different measurement. In that sense, you are correct as Denali is 5,000 feet taller than when measured from their respective bases, but the summit of Everest is ~8,700 feet higher above sea level than Denali’s peak.
Taller but not higher.
Yet. Dun dun dunnn
Then why are they bringing oxygen up to the top of Everest? Oh, because it’s higher!
Higher above sea level. But there is actually another mountain whose peak is further from earth's core. It is Mount Chimborazo, the earth is a bit squashed and is wider at the equator and sea level is further from the core there than closer to the polls.
When measured from base to summit. Not ‘base of sea floor’ to summit.
I measure From the taint
We are the same
not my fault OP didn't specify 🤷♀️ I just find it interesting info worth sharing, not like making a contest here.
There are mountains under the oceans that are significantly taller and wider than Mt Everest. In fact there are at least two; one for sure that dwarfs Mt Everest. These are in the Pacific. Perhaps a long time ago these were above ground. It's also possible these may be above water at some point in the future.
Interestingly, depending on how one measures it, Mt. Everest is not currently the highest point on Earth. If we define "height" as the distance from the centre of the Earth then that title belongs to Mount Chimborazo. It's only when we define "height" as height above the average level of the sea (i.e. sea level) that Everest takes the prize. Source: [https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/highestpoint.html](https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/highestpoint.html)
So this is purely speculative, but Olympus Mons on Mars is over 20km high, that’s with drastically less erosion, and roughly 1/3rd the gravity. I would doubt anything on earth could get over 10km for long, maybe at one point there was a 15km high volcano for some time before collapsing.
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What do you mean? Continental places have always been moving around and colliding with one another. Even during Pangea.
It depends on what you mean and how you measure it. Mauna Kea is 33,500 feet from base to peak. Mount Chimborazo's peak is about 6,800 feet further from the center of the earth than the peak of Everest is. Everest is the tallest only when measured from average sea level.
actually the point furthest from the earths core is mount chimborazo not mount everest.
Arthur's seat. Can be seen for miles.
I believe the Canadian Shield used to be a massive mountain that was significantly larger than Everest and probably could have been the tallest mountain in geological history
Are you asking if Mt. Everest is the tallest ever mountain or if there were other mountains that were taller than Mt. Everest at the time. My understanding is that Mt. Everest is growing so it would not surprise me if it is growing faster than some other mountains.
Unlikely. Everest isn't even currently the closest mountain to space as that honor goes to Mt Chimborazo in Ecuador . . . .the earth bulges around the equator so mountains at or near it get extra oomph when it comes to being close to space even if they fall slightly behind in sea level measurements. Or put another way sea level at the equator isn't the same as sea level elsewhere.
Well, space is also further away close to the equator. But Mount Chimborazo is further from the earth's core.
Underwater still remains unseen
The highest point is actually in Hawaii
Mauna Kea is the tallest in terms of base (bottom of the Pacific ocean) to summit. However, above sea level, it's not even half of Everest.
Depends where you're standing (swimming)...highest point Chimborazo, Ecuador if we're going down that road. ;)