Mt Everest is just under 5.5miles high. Olympus Mons on Mars is 16 miles high. Why aren’t there much larger mountains on Earth? What’s the highest a mountain can go on Earth?
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The earth’s continents float on something called the Mantle which is layer of superheated, compressed, and rather malleable rock (not really liquid but not fully solid). When any part of a continent gets too heavy, like from mountain building, it displaces more of the mantle dipping into under it’s weight. Additionally the earth’s natural atmosphere (air blowing sand), hydrosphere (water movement), and biosphere (tree roots for example) all have the ability to erode rock in our around mountain ranges.
A fun thing of note is that Mars has a dead volcano that is over twice as tall as our tallest mountains. The atmosphere is many times less dense, there is no liquid water, and no known plant/animal life to break it down. But, there is not thought to be plate tectonics taking place on mars which suggests it lacks a mantle for the continents to float on.
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