Origin of Olympus Mons on Mars

Alexandre Kral
2 min readMar 21, 2017

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After looking at the Google map of Mars, I was struck to see that there is a huge depression called Hellas Planitia that seemed to be almost on the opposite side of the planet compared to Mount Olympus. So I decided to investigate this a bit further and came with this theory: Mount Olympus was created by the impact of a huge meteorite that struck on the opposite side of the planet and created this gigantic bulge/sierra of mountains called Mount Olympus, Mount Alba and Tharsis Montes.

My main reason to believe so is that by looking at the map and making some elementary measurements, the depression Hellas Planitia is diametrically opposed to Alba Mons (Mount Alba) and nearby we have all the other huge volcanos. This could of course be a complete coincidence but given the size of the Hellas Planitia and its origin (huge meteorite impact) it does make sense.

Here is the map of Mars used for the measurements:

Full map of Mars. The horizontal line is the equator. The two black dots denote Hellas Planitia and Alba Mons.

This huge impact in Hellas Planitia must have pushed a lot of material inside the core of Mars and pushed it to the other side of the planet where Alba Mons resides. On the following picture centered on Alba Mons, we can also clearly see gigantic stress fractures in that location which would also support the theory of an impact creating a bulge on the other side of the planet.

Topographic map of Alba Mons and surrounndings. Note the gigantic stress fractures around it.

The reason that Mount Olympus and the Tharsis Montes are located south of Alba Mons and thus not perfectly symmetric with respect to the crater impact Hellas Planitia could be attributed to a somewhat soft/liquid core at the time of impact and a thinner crust just south of Alba Mons that broke and let out more of the magma in that location.

There seems to be other evidence supporting this theory:
- those Mounts are unlike any others on Earth and don’t appear to have been formed in the same way with successive deposition of magma;
- geologic features appear to be younger than a lot of of the other landscape on Mars and so indicate it would have formed at the same period.

That one time event by breaking the crust in this location (Mount Olympus, Alba Mons and Tharsis Montes) also probably set off a continuing volcanic activity in that region.

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