Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Final

At first, when you glance at my location through pictures or see it through a super high tech telescope (luck you if you can) it doesn't seem like much. What truly makes this location unique and sets it apart from others is its sheer size. 16 miles above surrounding plains and 374 miles across is not a small location people… Thats enormous! Since this is my last blog, I want to emphasize this. Its sticks up out of the planets atmosphere. Thats not to say that its sticking out into space. Although its not, we can safely say thats its pretty close. A better visual idea is to think about airplanes on earth, they fly at approximately 32,000-37,000 feet up in the sky, the mountain (if my math is correct) stands at 88,176 feet tall. Thats not even half the size of this mountain. It's so tall that at different heights you will experience different atmospheric pressures.

The reason its impressive is because of how long it takes to create a geographical  location so enormous. Our lifetime would be a grain of sand in the scale of its creation process. In the big scheme of things olympus mons old (from a human standpoint) because it has taken billions of years to form but its also relatively young in terms of the solar system because specific areas of the mountain are only a couple of million years old. These specific areas are believed to house rock glaciers. This dust/ice deposits are above the base of the shield volcano. This region of the mountain is believed to be four million years old. Now, ladies and gentleman, it may still be an active volcano therefore, it has the potential to erupt. So be careful when traveling.

Furthermore, as time takes its course this location will change. If we fast forward thousands or even millions of years it will look different. If we assume that no extraterrestrial life forms alter the plant we will have one possible outcome if not, we will have two. The first is based on time and pressure. Over the course of 10,000 years, Olympus Mons will look practically the same only with a slight build up of a tiny layer of dust/ice. If we jump to 1,000,000 years in the future we will have 100 times the buildup of dust/ice and the hot spot that once built the mountain will be slightly cooler. Finally, if we fast forward 100,000,000 we will have 10,000 times the built of dust/ice since the first jump and a drastic change in temperature of the hot spot. If we have an eruption then everything changes. The second example would be a result of extraterrestrial lifeforms altering the atmosphere and planet for their colonization purposes. That my friends would be a different story. Farewell.

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