Two mountains – higher than Everest, if you measure their height differently
Mount Everest, as you know from school, is the highest mountain in the Himalayas and in the world. However, due to the change in the approach to measuring height, it has competitors. Writes about this LiveScience.
Researchers have measured Everest’s height many times over the past few decades, but the latest estimate, announced in November 2021, shows it to be 8,848.86 meters above sea level. This is quite an impressive height, but the question arises: why do we use the term “above sea level” when determining the highest peak in the world?
“For measurements to be comparable, you need to have a stable baseline,” Martin Price, professor and founding director of the Mountain Research Center at the University of the Highlands and the Isles of Scotland, told Live Science. “Historically and even now, altitude is usually defined as the height above mean sea level. However, this should be related to the standard mean sea level to be determined. Sea levels differ in different parts of the world, and they change due to climate change. “
Today, altitude is measured relative to the mathematically defined geoid of the Earth. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the geoid is “a model of global mean sea level that is used to accurately measure surface heights.”
But what if measurements were taken simply from bottom to top? Will Everest continue to lead? The answer is a categorical “no”. That honor would go to Mauna Kea, an inactive volcano in Hawaii. Although its peak is 4,205m above sea level, which National Geographic says is less than half the height of Everest, much of Mauna Kea is hidden below sea level. When measured from base to peak, Mauna Kea is 10,211 m high.
“It all depends on your point of view,” Price said. – “If there were no oceans on our planet, there would be no disputes! You could make comparisons with the highest mountains on other bodies in the solar system that have no oceans. “
Meanwhile, another contender, Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador, boasts a summit that is the farthest point from the center of the Earth. Chimborazo is not the tallest mountain in the Andes – it is not even in the top 30, but it’s all about its proximity to the equator. The earth is not a perfect sphere – technically a flattened spheroid – and it bulges along the equator. This is the result of the force created by the rotation of the Earth. This means there is a 21.39 km difference between the planet’s polar radius (6,356.75 km) and its equatorial radius (6,378.14 km), according to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Chimborazo is located just one degree south of the equator, where the Earth’s bulge is most noticeable; this geographic oddity means that the summit of Chimborazo is 6384.3 km from the Earth’s core, making it 2,072 m farther from the center of the planet than the peak of Everest.
