Our inspiration this week is the long-dead volcano on Mars, Olympus Mons. As you can see in the accompanying image, the mountain is literally as big as the entire state of Arizona.
It has a height of 13.6 miles (or 22 kilometers or 72,000 feet, take your pick). In short, it’s two-and-a-half times the height of Mount Everest above sea level. Olympus Mons is the largest known volcano in the solar system. As a shield volcano, built up from successive basaltic flows, it’s much like the Hawaiian volcanoes, but on a much larger scale.
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