Timeline for How high can a mountain possibly get?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
7 events
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| Apr 29, 2022 at 0:35 | comment | added | Kevin Kostlan | Everest only rises about 3-3.5 km from it's "base". In California, Mt san Jacinto in southern California is about the same (!) at 3.1-3.2 km. Mauna Kea is much more, quite close to your maximum at just over 10km from the sea floor! Because we use 2g/cc for the rock below sea level, there is a bit of a safety margin, and probably more safety margin if we considered that the material would have to slide away (shear), not be crushed into nothingness vertically. | |
| Jun 17, 2020 at 7:09 | history | edited | Jean-Marie Prival | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 20, 2019 at 23:49 | comment | added | Spencer | Granite is not the rock whose compressive strength that's at issue - it's upper mantle material. | |
| Mar 23, 2019 at 16:15 | history | edited | Camilo Rada | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Feb 22, 2017 at 20:50 | comment | added | Earth Science Expatriate | As a geologist, I found the article useful. I am sure you can get a good ballpark estimated range for mountain height by varying the parameters of the calculate rock density and compressive strength. The answer feels right 10-17km for height of a mountain. I think it would be a much harder calculation to determine max altitude of mountain peak can be. Your point about crust buoyancy are spot on. | |
| Feb 22, 2017 at 20:21 | comment | added | Knob Scratcher | Thanks Gary! As a first order approximation of how high you can pour a granite mountain onto a table top, this "back of the envelope" calculation is kind of useful. To a geologist, I'm not sure it is. Even the author agrees that a calculation not considering the actual shear strength of a given rock is has little bearing on reality. Furthermore, in the context of the question and this calculation, one has to ask what this 10km high mountain is actually resting on: buoyant continental crust? Oceanic plate? The Tibetan plateau? | |
| Feb 22, 2017 at 19:51 | history | answered | Earth Science Expatriate | CC BY-SA 3.0 |