Does DNA determine success in life?

Your genes may play a part in whether or not you'll enjoy career and financial success, researchers suggest.

But, these "success" genes aren't necessarily your destiny. They may play only a small role in your life, and the study wasn't designed to prove that certain genes determine your future, the researchers noted.

A previous study found that genetic variants might be linked with levels of education. These variants could then be turned into a "polygenic score." And, people with a score above zero were more likely to complete more years of schooling, the researchers said.

This new study, published June 1 in the journalPsychological Science, took that finding a step further.

"Getting a good education requires many of the same skills and abilities needed to get ahead in life more generally. So, we hypothesized that the same genetics that predicted success in schooling would predict success in life," said study leader Daniel Belsky, who's with the Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C.

He and his colleagues looked at nearly four decades of data. The data included almost 1,000 people in New Zealand.

The researchers found those with higher polygenic scores were more likely than those with lower scores to move away from home in search of career opportunities. They were also more likely to have more successful careers, to be better at managing their money, and to have spouses with higher levels of education and income, the study found.

This link between higher polygenic scores and success was seen even in people born into families that were relatively poor.

Intelligence accounted for some of the association between genes and success. But, so did other psychological characteristics such as self-control and interpersonal skills, the researchers said.

The researchers didn't find a link between polygenic scores and physical health.

While the findings suggest how genes may play a role in shaping peoples' lives, the links between polygenic scores and life success are small, the researchers emphasized.

"We can make only very weak predictions about how far a child can go in life based on their genes," Belsky said in a journal news release.

" 'Precision education' or other tailoring of environments to children's genomes is not possible with the data we have in hand today, but our findings suggest that such data may someday become available," he said. "It is vital to have the conversation about what that might mean and how we will deal with it before it happens.

Everest might not be the tallest mountain.

Here’s an easy question for you: What’s the tallest mountain in the world? If you are wary of being asked such a seemingly simple query, you would be right to be concerned, because the answer is not necessarily Mount Everest.

At a height of 8,848 meters (29,029 feet) above sea level, it puts other mountains on Earth to shame. However, if you measure this distance out from the center of Earth, thanks to elevated crust near the equator, Ecuador’sChimborazo is by far the “tallest.”

Measured above sea level, it is only 6,268 meters (20,564 feet) high; when taken from Earth’s core, it is actually 2,168 meters (7,113 feet) higher than Everest would be by this metric. This means that although Everest may be the highest peak on Earth, Chimborazo may in fact be the most prominent – meaning that it “sticks out” more than anything else.

Then there’s the issue of Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on the island of Hawaii. At 4,207 meters (13,803 feet) above sea level, it doesn’t come close to either Everest of Chimborazo using this traditional metric. If the water around it is removed, however, then the height of this once angry mountain is actually around 9,330 meters (30,610 feet). Side by side, Mauna Kea trounces Everest.

The beautiful Mauna Kea, which is pretty darn tall once all the water is removed. Galyna Andrushko/Shutterstock

The reason this old volcano is so high is because it is sitting on oceanic crust, which is denser than the continental crust that Everest has emerged out of. This means that, even with a massive chunk of rock sitting on top of it, the former cannot be compacted as much as the latter. Ultimately, oceanic crust can support the weight of higher mountains than the continental crust ever could.

In any case, this all pales in comparison to the depths of the deepest point in the ocean. The Challenger Deep, found south of the Japanese archipelago, is 10,984 meters (36,036 feet) below the surface of the ocean. At this depth, it is 2,136 meters (7,000 feet) deeper than Mount Everest is tall.

But why stop at looking at Earth’s features? Thanks to a now-extinguished stationary superheated mantle plume beneath the crust, the Olympus Mons shield volcano on Mars spent millennia piling lava flow after lava flow on top of itself. Nowadays, the extinct edifice is 21,229 meters (69,649 feet) high, which is roughly 2.4 times the height of Everest.

A five-frame sequence of images from New Horizons that captures the giant plume from Io's Tvashtar volcano. NASA/JHU Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

Speaking of volcanoes, Io – the most volcanically active object ever discovered – is currently orbiting Jupiter and spewing out some unbelievably high plumes of sulfurous material. Thanks to explosive volcanic activity at the surface, a nearly non-existent atmosphere providing almost zero resistance, and a low gravitational field strength, some of these plumes can reach heights of 500 kilometers (311 miles).

These gloriously gargantuan columns of volcanic material, some of which have been observed in real-time as they begin to freeze into frigid crystals in space, can fit around 57 Mount Everests inside them. To the Solar System, Everest is a mere molehill.