Wednesday, 22 January 2014

planet - mountains higher than atmosphere

This is a bit of a gray area, as an atmosphere doesn't have a clear boundary. That being said, Olympus Mons on Mars is so tall, the atmospheric pressure on top of it is only 12% the average pressure on the surface of Mars. That's near vacuum by terrestrial standards.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympus_Mons#Description



In general, for this to happen you need:



  • a pretty thin atmosphere to begin with

  • some exceptional geology that ends up producing very tall anomalies like Olympus

It's not a very likely combination, but it can happen, as seen on Mars.

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