High atop the Himalaya, Mount Everest towers over its neighbors in this picture taken by NASA's EOS-1 spacecraft. In Nepal, the mountain is called Sagarmatha, which means "mother of the universe." (See: "The State of Everest: The Climbers Weigh In.")

The snowy scene disguises the origins of the Himalaya, built of marine limestone that crumpled upward to form mighty mountains in the collision of Asia with the Indian subcontinent, some 40 million years ago.