Mars beaten off balance

- Mars looks very different than before. More than 3 billion years ago, the surface is beaten about 20 degrees from vertical. That was due to the emergence of a huge volcanic plateau called Tharsis. That was so great that the entire surface of the planet began to slide.

French researchers which Thursday. They write about it in the major science journal Nature. Tharsis is 5,000 kilometers and 12 kilometers thick. The platform weighs about a billion times a billion tons. By forming slid across the plateau of the northern hemisphere toward the equator of Mars. Due also received other parts of the planet, such as the north and south poles, a new place.

When the platform is the volcano Olympus Mons. Which is almost 22 kilometers high. It is the largest volcano in our solar system. The mountain is 2.5 times as high as the highest mountain on earth, Mount Everest. In the surface is about the same size as Italy.