Volcanology of Mars through the crust to produce volcanic mountains. However, the largest volcano on the planet, Olympus Mons, is thought to have formed when the plates were not moving. Olympus Mons may have formed just after the plate motion stopped. The mare-like plains on Mars are roughly 3 to 3.5 billion years old. The giant shield volcanoes are younger, formed between 1 and 2 billion years ago. Olympus Mons may be "as young as 200 million years." Norman H. Sleep, professor of geophysics at Stanford University, described how the three volcanoes that form a line along the Tharsis Ridge may be extinct
A Beautiful Planet does not have a planetary magnetic field. Consequently, "its atmosphere was ripped away from the planet by the solar wind. If you could stand on Mars today, you would find a landscape of lifeless desolation; very cold, and very dry." One of the current challenges in maintaining Earth's planetary "life support system" is global warming. The film shows how Earth's warming climate is causing the Greenland ice sheet to melt, and drives the point home by showing the Jakobshavn Glacier calving an incredibly large number of icebergs in relatively rapid succession as the end of this flowing river of ice