The mighty scale of Mars’ geology
Click for original image.
Today’s cool image is just one more example out of hundreds I have posted in the past decade of the difficult-to imagine gigantic scale of the Martian landscape.
The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 1, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The image title is simple, “Steep Slopes of Olympus Mons Caldera,” and tells us that this cliff face, about 1,300 feet high, is part of the caldera that resides on top of Mars’ largest volcano, Olympus Mons.
The parallel cracks on the plateau above the cliff tell us that the cliff face is slowly separating outward from that plateau, and that at some point in the future the entire wall will collapse downward.
Sounds impressive and big, eh? What the picture doesn’t make clear however is how truly tiny this cliff is in the context of the entire mountain.
The red dot on the overview map to the right marks the location, on a small lower cliff inside Olympus Mons’ 50-mile-wide caldera. Though 1,300 feet high, this cliff is dwarfed by the landscape around it. The actual edge of the caldera, about two miles to the west, is a cliff face four to five times higher. The plateau at the top of this larger cliff forms the relatively flat peak of Olympus Mons, which sits 70,000 feet above Mars’ mean “sea level,” more than twice as high as Mount Everest on Earth.
And yet, as I noted in 2022,
… the scale of this mountain would make the skill to climb it more in line with a hard core hiker than a mountain climber. At few points from bottom to top would you ever have to scale a cliff. Instead, the journey would be one long, long, long trudge up a never-ending slope, running almost 300 miles from base to peak. Even the mountain’s edge, that seems so much like a cliff, is actually less a cliff and more a somewhat steeper slope. All you’d need at a few points is to switch back a few times to lessen the grade.
To get down into the caldera however might require some rock-climbing ability, though upon close inspection I suspect a hiking route could still be found down these cliffs.
Mars is big in all ways. It helps illustrate the vastness of the universe, on a scale that we humans can actually understand.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Click for original image.
Today’s cool image is just one more example out of hundreds I have posted in the past decade of the difficult-to imagine gigantic scale of the Martian landscape.
The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 1, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The image title is simple, “Steep Slopes of Olympus Mons Caldera,” and tells us that this cliff face, about 1,300 feet high, is part of the caldera that resides on top of Mars’ largest volcano, Olympus Mons.
The parallel cracks on the plateau above the cliff tell us that the cliff face is slowly separating outward from that plateau, and that at some point in the future the entire wall will collapse downward.
Sounds impressive and big, eh? What the picture doesn’t make clear however is how truly tiny this cliff is in the context of the entire mountain.
The red dot on the overview map to the right marks the location, on a small lower cliff inside Olympus Mons’ 50-mile-wide caldera. Though 1,300 feet high, this cliff is dwarfed by the landscape around it. The actual edge of the caldera, about two miles to the west, is a cliff face four to five times higher. The plateau at the top of this larger cliff forms the relatively flat peak of Olympus Mons, which sits 70,000 feet above Mars’ mean “sea level,” more than twice as high as Mount Everest on Earth.
And yet, as I noted in 2022,
… the scale of this mountain would make the skill to climb it more in line with a hard core hiker than a mountain climber. At few points from bottom to top would you ever have to scale a cliff. Instead, the journey would be one long, long, long trudge up a never-ending slope, running almost 300 miles from base to peak. Even the mountain’s edge, that seems so much like a cliff, is actually less a cliff and more a somewhat steeper slope. All you’d need at a few points is to switch back a few times to lessen the grade.
To get down into the caldera however might require some rock-climbing ability, though upon close inspection I suspect a hiking route could still be found down these cliffs.
Mars is big in all ways. It helps illustrate the vastness of the universe, on a scale that we humans can actually understand.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Well said, Bob.
Shouldn’t that be “areology”?