MicroFactzzz#0005 · 🌌 Cosmic Oddities
The Biggest Canyon in the Solar System Isn't on Earth
Valles Marineris on Mars is so long that, stretched across the US, it would span an entire continent.
The Grand Canyon in Arizona is about 450 kilometers long and impressive from any angle.
Valles Marineris on Mars stretches over 4,000 kilometers and reaches depths of 7 kilometers in places — nearly ten times longer and considerably deeper than its Earthly counterpart.
Stretched across a map of the United States, it would run from New York to California. It wasn't carved by water erosion like canyons on Earth — it mostly formed from the planet's crust cracking as the nearby Tharsis volcanic bulge took shape.
The takeaway: our sense of "huge" is Earth-centric — geological scale in the Solar System can run an order of magnitude bigger than anything we know from our own planet.
Sources
- General knowledge / encyclopedic sources
This fact is based on generally available knowledge, not a single, citable source. See how we approach verification.
Krulicza Nora
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