Buzz
The word 'mountain' is often used broadly to describe any significant heap, and while some of the peaks listed here may not technically be natural landforms on their planets, they are undeniably massive and either awe-inspiring or shrouded in mystery. Presenting ten of the most mystifying mountains.
10. Brown Mountain
After years of futile attempts to witness the mysterious lights that were said to dance around Brown Mountain in North Carolina, Dr. Daniel Caton, a physics professor at Appalachian State University, was ready to give up. Then, on July 17, 2016, he saw an orb glide across the mountain ridge. It vanished, reappeared, disappeared again, and reappeared a second time.
Dr. Caton reviewed the footage from both cameras capturing the strange phenomenon to confirm the orb’s peculiar movements. Had only one camera recorded the event, he might have assumed it was a lens flare. However, both cameras documented the same strange images. While he could dismiss the idea of lens flares, he still couldn’t explain the mysterious orb, and the Brown Mountain lights remain enigmatic to this day.
9. A Mountain Surrounded by a Moat
NASA scientists are baffled by a newly discovered feature on the surface of Charon, Pluto's largest moon. Referred to as a “mountain in a moat,” this elevated mound inside a “depression” was captured by NASA’s New Horizons Geology, Geophysics, and Imaging team during the spacecraft’s flyby of the moon on July 4, 2015, marking the ninth year of its interplanetary mission.
Scientists are eager to gain a clearer understanding of the “mountain in a moat” once “full-fidelity data” is retrieved from the spacecraft’s imaging tools.
8. Rainbow Mountains
Nature took 24 million years to sculpt the stunning Rainbow Mountains, located in China’s Zhangye Danxia Landform Geological Park. These mountains, rising sharply with thick, jagged slopes, are made of colored sandstone. After enduring immense compression over ages, the rocks were thrust upwards by shifting tectonic plates, creating towering, jagged peaks.
As a result, the mountains are streaked with vibrant shades of orange, yellow, blue, green, red, brown, and more, giving them a festive, almost magical appearance. Some areas resemble ribbon candy, while others look like prisms scattering colors across vast stretches of rugged peaks. Many portions of the mountains seem as if they’ve been painted by colossal brushes.
7. Moving Mountain
Mountains are typically stationary, but an enormous sand mountain is defying expectations, shifting at a rate of 20 meters (66 ft) per year. It's not just the massive dune that moves either. According to Tanzania’s former president Jakaya Kikwete, some of the sand from the mountain “kept moving” even after it had been loaded into his car.
Standing at 10 meters (33 ft) tall and stretching 100 meters (330 ft) wide, this crescent-shaped sand mountain constantly alters its shape and direction every decade. At one point, it even split in two and moved in separate directions. It's thought to be the result of a volcanic eruption. The Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority uses beacons to monitor and predict the movements of the mountain.
6. Seamounts
Two submersibles equipped with cameras, Pisces IV and Pisces V, have taken scientists deep beneath the ocean's surface, where they’ve encountered seamounts, underwater mountains whose peaks never reach the surface. Some of these mountains rise 3,000 meters (9,800 ft) from the ocean floor, and they stretch across vast areas of the sea.
Largely unexplored, these seamounts serve as habitats for rare and extraordinary creatures, such as kitefin sharks, cutthroat eels, and potentially undiscovered coral species. One video captured a dumbo octopus changing its colors as it swam past Pisces V, seemingly shedding its skin, while another recorded a Pacific sleeper shark, with its ominous shadow trailing across the seafloor as it moved alongside the submersible.
5. Mount Sharp
After five years of evaluating 100 potential sites, NASA selected Gale Crater on Mars as the landing site for its Curiosity rover in July 2011. The reason for this choice was the mound within the pit, which showed signs of having once contained water, an essential element for life. The origin of the mountain within the crater, named Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp, remains a mystery, and the area surrounding the crater is known for its “varied terrain.” Curiosity’s mission was to search for carbon-based organic compounds similar to those found in terrestrial life.
Scientists believed these compounds might be located at the base of Mount Sharp. While astrobiologists agree that no universal definition of life exists, they all agreed that Gale Crater and its mountain were among the most promising places on Mars to begin their search for extraterrestrial life.
Current research suggests the 5.5-kilometer-tall (3.4 mi) mountain was not formed by water, as previously hoped. Instead, it’s primarily composed of layers of lake silt that were deposited by wind. However, scientists believe the foothills of Mount Sharp “were once exposed to liquid water” and that the mountain may have once been large enough to entirely fill the 154-kilometer (96 mi) crater.
4. Sugarloaf Mountain
Rising 396 meters (1,299 ft) above Rio de Janeiro, Sugarloaf Mountain is an iconic geological landmark. However, the mysterious signs, symbols, and texts that once appeared on the mountain’s granite face are truly perplexing. In October 2013, green laser beams projected “scrambled symbols” that seemed to convey a hidden message. A strange hologram, resembling a pinwheel of four feathers encircled by curved lines, lingered on the mountain’s side for two hours before slowly fading away, leaving behind the text: “#WINNER TAKES EARTH.”
Some speculate that these enigmatic messages could be linked to Brazil’s hosting of the 2014 World Cup, but the true meaning of these cryptic symbols remains unsolved.
3. Ahuna Mons
Ahuna Mons, also known as “the Pyramid,” is situated in the remote region of the dwarf planet Ceres, a location that perplexes Paul Schenk, a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, who is a member of NASA’s Dawn spacecraft mission science team. Typically, formations like this are found within craters. Standing nearly 6.5 kilometers (4 mi) tall and stretching 16 kilometers (10 mi) across, the pyramid-like peak also holds another mystery: Strange “bright streaks” cascade down its sides, resembling the puzzling bright spots found within Ceres’s Occator Crater.
At first, scientists were baffled by the origin of Ahuna Mons, but they now believe it could be “a massive ice volcano.” The formation of the Pyramid may have been caused by eruptions of saltwater from the planet’s interior, gradually building up over millions of years. David A. Williams from Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration notes that scientists are hoping to witness “some venting” as Ceres draws closer to the Sun.
2. The Great Dune Of Pyla
The Great Dune of Pyla, also known as “Pilat,” is situated on the coast of Arcachon Bay in France. This towering sand dune stretches 500 meters (1,600 ft) wide, 3 kilometers (1.9 mi) long, and rises to a height of 107 meters (351 ft). The dune is in constant motion, advancing 10 meters (33 ft) annually, having shifted 280 meters (918 ft) over the past 57 years, an average of 4.9 meters (16.1 ft) each year.
Over its journey, the dune has engulfed or buried 20 private homes, 8,000 square meters (86,000 ft) of pine forest, and even a road. The shifting of the dune is driven by oceanic winds. Today, it has become a popular tourist destination, drawing in climbers (who use a staircase with a railing), paragliders, and hikers.
1. Instant Mountain
In just a matter of minutes, the same asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago also created a mountain taller than Mount Everest. Situated on the Yucatán Peninsula, near Chicxulub, Mexico, this mountain filled the center of the asteroid’s enormous impact crater, which spans 180 kilometers (112 mi) in diameter. Rather than forming a single peak, the “instant mountain” took shape as a peak ring, a circular, fragmented ridge at the heart of the crater.
Two main theories explain the formation of the mountain. One suggests that the asteroid’s impact melted the top of a peak, causing it to form a ring of disconnected peaks. The other theory posits that the asteroid’s penetration into the Earth was so deep that it triggered the collapse of the crater. Scientists exploring the peak ring of the crater believe it was a result of this collapse, which then created the ring structure, a theory known as the dynamic collapse model.
