Ain't no mountain high enough

Two of my favourite things in the world are geology and Christmas, and rarely do they interact so neatly as with the Christmas lectures at  the Royal Institute. Although, since they require all adults to bring a child, (and I do not own one of these, nor know of one I could legally borrow) I cannot gleefully whoop as they  suscept clearly unstable models to the effects of gravity, or Ahhh over the timelapse images of erosion on Earth's largest mountains. 

This year Dr Mark Miodownik discusses how size is limited on Earth. It's always intrigued me how our planet keeps itself so carefully within it's most suitable limits, in particular how our planet works hard to make sure nothing grows too large, yet humans strive for the biggest things we can get, biggest house, biggest christmas tree and tallest buildings. 

Despite being the product of the biggest building events in history, mountains are in fact dominated by erosional processes; mass wasting, glaciers and rivers all try their damndest to bring mountains back down to sea level. Although most of these processes are affected by climate, does this mean that with global warming the erosional processes will dry up and our mountains will keep growing until they reach the moon? 

Well which planet, despite a cooler climate and far less water, is the overly-confident guy insisting size matters? Winning the blue ribbon for the largest mountain in the solar system, Olympus Mons, it's Mars! The unseen force of gravity is the biggest factor in building things high above the planet's surface and Mars has the smallest values in the solar system, which is what gives it such impressive building power. 

And gravity will have it's say even in human construction. As clever building methods and lighter materials mean new buildings go up every  year claiming to be 'the tallest building in the world"  soon a natural homeostatic level will be reached where our greed for ever taller buildings will be quashed. Gravity will decide we've had enough and will prevent our buildings climbing into the stratosphere. As these buildings only get a fraction taller every year, it suggests we're reaching that limit soon. 

Although there's still plenty of time for us to genetically modify a Christmas Tree to 1200ft high!