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One type of extreme environment is the mountains. Click on the links below and learn more about survival in the mountains.

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Making Mountains

Some mountains form when the big slabs of rock-called tectonic plates-that make up the Earth's crust crash into each other. Over millions of years, the sheets of rock push up and over one another, creating the mountain. Others form when vents in the Earth's surface erupt and spew lava out onto the ground. The lava piles up and cools. Over millions of years, the many layers of hard lava become a mountain.

Mountains are on every continent. The longest mountain range is over 40,000 miles long-and 90 percent is under the ocean! Called the Mid-Ocean Ridge, it wraps around the globe like the seams of a baseball. The longest aboveground mountain range is the Andes. Running along the entire west coast of South America through seven different countries-including Argentina, Chile, and Colombia -it's 4,700 miles long.

Mount Everest, on the border of Nepal and China in Asia, is the highest mountain above sea level in the world. Towering at just over 29,000 feet it would take almost 5,000 grown men stacked on top of each other to reach that high.

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One type of extreme environment is the mountains. Click on the links below and learn more about survival in the mountains.

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Our mountain environments are home to some of the most resilient animals adapted to one of the earth’s harshest and most fragile environments.

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One type of extreme environment is the mountains. Click on the links below and learn more about survival in the mountains.

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Kids learn about the taiga forest biome. The largest of the land biomes is known for its evergreen trees.

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One type of extreme environment is the oceans. Click on the links below and learn more about survival in the oceans.

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One type of extreme environment is the oceans. Click on the links below and learn more about survival in the oceans.

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Hostile Planet - Oceans - Survival Tips by Bear Grylls

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One type of extreme environment is the space. Click on the links below and learn more about survival in space.

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How do astronauts live in space where they have to float to move about? Let's take a look at life while working and living in the space shuttle.

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One type of extreme environment is the space. Click on the links below and learn more about survival in space.

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Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you'd like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.

Can people live outside Earth? - Holly, age 7, Toowoomba.

That's a great question, Holly. The short answer is yes, but it's really, really difficult.

Humans are great at living in tough places. Even before we developed modern technology, we had spread out to live in all of Earth's continents - from the really cold areas in North America, Europe and Asia, to the hottest parts of Australia. But there are still lots of places on Earth humans can't normally survive - like underneath the ocean, or at the South Pole.

Those places are dangerous - without protection, you would die in seconds or minutes. But, thanks to modern technology, we've worked out how to live there. People can live for months at a time under the oceans, or down at the icy South Pole.

How do they manage it? Well, they find a way to make the conditions there more like what we're used to at home.

Read more: Curious Kids: why is the Sun orange when white stars are the hottest?

To live underwater, people build submarines. They're warm and dry inside - perfect conditions for people to live in. People take food, oxygen and water with them into submarines, and use electricity to power lights and heaters. In other words, they change a cold, dark and dangerous place (deep beneath the ocean) into something like a home.

We do the same at the South Pole. We build special buildings, and dig tunnels, and make them warm and dry. The people who live there take food and water with them, and there's extra heating so people don't freeze in the Antarctic winds and ice.

But you can't live in these cold, dark places forever. Humans don't cope well if they don't get enough sunlight, so they do need to get back to "normal life" after a while. And it's really expensive to bring all the food, water, air and energy to these places.

Read more: Curious Kids: What plants could grow in the Goldilocks zone of space?

Life in space

Space is very dangerous - and without protection, people would not be able to survive there. In space, there's no air - so you couldn't breathe. It's cold - so you'd freeze. And there's lots of nasty radiation (from the Sun, and from the rest of the Universe), so you'd get really, really bad sunburn. But despite all that, we have people living in space all the time!

There's this amazing place orbiting the Earth called the International Space Station - and there are people who live there, all day, every day. You can sometimes even see it from your back yard, on a clear night!

The space station is like a submarine built especially for space. A giant tin can, filled with air, and kept nice and warm - not too hot, and not too cold. It protects the astronauts from the cold of space, gives them air to breathe, and protects them from all that nasty radiation. We send up regular shipments of food and drink - everything they need to survive.

In other words - we've found a way to let people live outside Earth, and we do it by making the place we want to live just like home. Again, though, it's not safe for people to live their forever, and being in space for a long time isn't good for your body.

If people ever get to live on Mars, or on the Moon - or other places in the Solar system (and beyond) - it will be because we have found a way to make those places nice, safe and a bit more like home.

Whilst living on the Moon or Mars sounds like science fiction, people are talking seriously about doing just that in the future. It would be very dangerous, and really expensive. But who knows what the future holds?

Read more: Curious Kids: Do astronauts get space sick when they travel from Earth to the International Space Station?

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you'd like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. We won't be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

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Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you'd like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids. Can people live outside Earth?

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What Is the Weather Like on Other Planets? | NASA Space Place – NASA Science for Kids

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Each of the planets in our solar system experiences its own unique weather.

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Whether you are stranded in the ocean due to a plane crash, a sinking boat, or getting swept out to sea by an undertow, the isolation of being stranded in the o