Why can’t the mountains on Earth exceed 10,000 meters?

The highest mountain on earth is the main peak of the Himalayas, Mount Everest, which is about 8,844 meters high.

Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth now. Is it possible that there will be higher mountains on Earth in the distant future? This possibility exists, but it is not great, because there is a limit to the height of the mountains on Earth. In fact, not only the mountains on Earth have a limit to their height, but also the mountains on any planet have a limit to their height. What determines the limit of the height of the mountains on a planet? In fact, it is gravity. The higher the mountain, the heavier the mountain, and the greater the pressure the bottom of the mountain needs to bear. When the pressure exceeds the limit that the mountain can bear, the mountain will collapse.

So how high a mountain on a planet can reach depends entirely on the gravity of the planet.

You can understand this intuitively by looking at other planets in the solar system. For example, the gravity of Mars, Earth's neighbor, is about one-third of that of Earth, so the mountains on Mars are obviously much higher than those on Earth. For example, the famous Olympus volcano is more than 21,000 meters high, nearly three times the height of Mount Everest. The maximum height of a mountain depends on gravity, so what is the maximum height of a mountain on Earth? It is about 20,000 meters. How is this number calculated?

There is a formula for calculating the maximum height of a mountain, namely: Maximum height of a mountain = ML/mg.

In this formula, M represents the mass of the planet, L represents the diameter of the planet, m is the mass of the mountain, and g is the acceleration of gravity. According to this formula, the maximum height of the earth's mountains is about 0.0016 times the diameter of the earth. The diameter of the earth is 12,742 kilometers, so the maximum height of the mountain is about 20,000 meters. Since the maximum height of the earth's mountains is 20,000 meters, why is the highest peak on earth only 8,844 meters? It is gravity that determines the extreme value of the mountain's height, but in addition to gravity, there are many other factors that affect the actual height of the mountain.

The earth is a vibrant planet, and precisely because of this, there is relatively serious erosion on the earth.

Natural phenomena such as thunder and lightning, hail, rain, snow, wind and frost can cause erosion on mountains. Of course, the speed of this erosion is very slow, but the earth has enough time. It has existed for 4.6 billion years. Over time, even the highest peaks will be worn down. Therefore, it is not surprising that the highest peak on earth is more than 10,000 meters lower than the theoretical maximum. There is a lot of real evidence that erosion suppresses the height of mountains, because there are many typical erosion mountains in the world, such as Huoyan Mountain in Xinjiang. From the outside, we can clearly see the traces of erosion.

In addition, the maximum height of the mountain calculated based on gravity does not take into account the materials that make up the mountain. Obviously, the pressure-bearing capacity of buildings built with different materials is not the same.

Nature is not an ideal environment. The materials that make up the mountains cannot actually meet the strength required by the theoretical extreme. As we know, the mountains on Earth are all made up of limestone, sandstone, gravel and soil. The strength of these materials is far from enough to support a 20,000-meter-high mountain, so the actual mountain height is far lower than the theoretical extreme.

This is not only true for the Earth, but for every planet, no mountain is in an ideal environment. Therefore, in reality, no mountain on any planet can truly reach the theoretical maximum.

For example, the highest mountains on Mars are only about 20,000 meters, which is far from its theoretical maximum height. Finally, the Earth is a planet with very active plate movement. It is very common for the sea to turn into mulberry fields and mulberry fields to turn into the sea. No mountain can move in the direction of uplift all the time, so it is impossible to push the mountain to the maximum height over time.