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where is the highest place that you can
climb up to on earth
this simple question has been around
with us for thousands of years
and the answer has always evolved over
time as our understanding of the planet
has gotten better and better
the answer to the question that probably
immediately jumped into your head
however
is mount everest which my every appeal
to common sense is the tallest mountain
in the world
and therefore is the highest up that you
can get to anywhere on the planet while
still standing on the surface
but any answer to this question can get
significantly more complicated depending
on how you phrase the question
and there can be other answers besides
just everest
here's what i mean most measurements of
height across the world are expressed in
distance above the mean global sea level
new york city right by the sea is only
10 meters above the sea
located further inland denver is over
one and a half kilometers above the sea
level
machu picchu is nearly two and a half
kilometers above the sea
while the summit of mount everest beats
everything else out at precisely 8
848 meters above the sea
nearly every measurement of height
across the world is done in this way and
by that metric
everest is indeed the highest up you can
possibly get to but there is another way
that you can measure height on earth
distance on the surface above the
earth's center as in
if you were stuck in the center of the
earth for whatever reason
how far up could you climb up in any
direction that would get you the
furthest away from it
if we use this method of height we
unexpectedly get a completely different
answer than everest for where the
highest place on earth is
and here's how while earth looks like a
sphere it isn't
really upon closer evaluation earth's
true shape is more akin to an oblate
spheroid
meaning that it bulges out slightly more
across the center than at the poles
the reason why earth is like this is
because it rotates around really really
quickly
and the centrifugal forces from that
rotation push the shape of the planet
out around the equator so as a result an
object sitting on the equator will be 22
kilometers higher up from the earth's
center than an object sitting on one of
the poles would be now of course
mountains hills and valleys exist all
across the planet that affects these
heights beyond the earth's center too
but they don't really play as big of a
role as most people think they do in the
grander scheme of things
everything above the earth's crust can
be imagined as the planet's surface with
a little bit of water filling some of
the deeper parts up
with that in mind let's take the
difference in height between the deepest
point on earth's surface above the crust
the marianas trench
and the supposed highest point at mount
everest the difference between
the two is 19759 meters
which is only 0.003
percent the same as earth's radius so
there's really not
that much variation in elevation on
earth's surface compared with the fuller
size of the planets
so with that in mind let's take a closer
look at everest
everest is 8 848 meters high above sea
level but with a location
of 27 degrees 59 minutes north of the
equator
and therefore north of the equatorial
bulge of the planet
the summit is located 6 382 kilometers
above the earth's center further back
towards the equatorial bulge
however we can find a lot of points on
earth that are actually higher up than
this
it's just that the entire continent of
mainland asia is actually located north
of the equator so
none of the mountains here get that big
of an underground boost
on the other hand the equator actually
does pass directly through south america
and right through the andes mountain
chain which is already
the largest mountain range found
anywhere outside of asia
a lot of peaks around the equator here
in the andes are actually higher up from
the center of the earth than everestess
because the bulge gives them a few extra
kilometers underneath as a sort of
handicap
let's take mount chimborazo in ecuador
as the prime
example of this measured by sea level
chimborazo
is already pretty impressive at 6268
meters high
which is higher up than any other
mountain in africa
north america or europe but it's a
substantial
two and a half kilometers lower than
everest is
however owing to chimborazo's location
only 1 degree
and 28 minutes south of the equator it
gets a pretty substantial boost in
height from the earth's bulge
the summit of chimborazo therefore is 6
384 kilometers above the earth's center
which is two kilometers further away
than the summit of everest is
this means that is measured from the
center of the earth the summit of
chimborazo
is the highest up you can possibly get
anywhere on the earth's surface
this also means that the closest you can
get to the moon
anywhere on earth's surface is at the
summit of chimborazo
and not everest in fact there's several
mountain peaks in this area of the andes
around the equator that are all higher
up than the earth's center than everest
is
and everest itself isn't even
technically the world's tallest mountain
either
tall and high have very different
meanings for one thing
tall is a measure of how physically tall
an object
stands while high just means how high of
an elevation an object is
for example let's take a 2 meter tall
person at sea level and a 1 meter tall
person on top of everest the 2 meter
person
is distinctly taller than the 1 meter
person while the 1 meter person
is distinctly higher up in elevation
keep that in mind
and let's compare mount everest with
mauna kea in hawaii if you measured both
of these mountains based on their
elevation upwards from sea level you'd
see that mahunakaya
is a puny 4207 meters high above the
water
compared with everest's mighty 8848
meters
however if you somehow removed the water
you'd see that the base of mauna kea is
in fact
much much bigger than what it seems at
first
that's because 58 percent of mauna kea
is
actually underwater so from base to tip
it's actually a whopping 10
200 meters tall compared with everest
unchanged
and now seemingly puny 8 848 meters
so everest is certainly not the world's
tallest mountain
and depending on how you're measuring
things it's not even necessarily
the world's highest mountain either now
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