Why No One Can Agree What’s REALLY the Tallest Mountain
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What's the tallest mountain on Earth? It might seem like an easy question to answer, but in reality it's one that brings up more NEW questions than answers. It turns out that the way we measure mountains rests on a lot of approximations, assumptions, and averages. And when you dig into those, there's several contenders for the tallest mountain, each with their own good case for the title. So, which mountain do YOU think should take the throne?
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So which one do YOU think deserves the title? 🏔🏆
@Don't read profile photo sure! :)
Great puns, great vid. Definitely would have loved more fleshing-out of the comparisons.
Olympus Mons on Mars as your title isn't limiting the search to Earth.😜
The one that's closest to the stars i guess
Mountain olympus for sure.
i remember being in highschool, confused about electronegativity in atoms, and the book i was working with said: "we cannot measure how electronegative an atom is, but we can measure it *against* another atom, and compare. Just like with mountains, which are measured against sea level"
and i thought: "well, now i'm confused about two things"
😂😂😂
I understand this as a year 7 lol
you lost me at highschool
@@chesterlai9444 🤓
@@chesterlai9444 🤓
This issue is hilariously portrayed in the 1995 film The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill But Came Down A Mountain. "Two English cartographers arrive in a small Welsh village and declare that its mountain is actually a hill. Later, the offended citizens hatch a plan to make the hill high enough before they leave." Let's add national pride to the practical problems of measuring mountains...
I much prefer the story of the Englishman who went up a hill and picked all the strawberries
Love how the community were so loyal to the mountain 🥰 hard to find such communities nowadays.
i LOVED that movie! So under rated but sooo good! Hugh Grant is amazing ! :D
_Ffynnon Garw_ is the mountain and is very real
I much prefer the story where the English are not involved at all. 😂
So, if the oceans evaporated, Everest will still be the tallest, and Mauna Kea will be the most prominent, and we’re done.
Nope. Chimborazo wins for tallest (farthest away from the Earth's core) if there's no sea level to measure against. Summary of the video: Everest=tallest relative to sea level. Denali=most prominent relative to sea level. Mauna Kea=most prominent from base to summit. Chimborazo=farthest point from the Earth's core.
@@eslnoob191 slightly wrong. Denali is most prominent relative to surrounding land above sea level. Everything else you stated is correct.
@@ActingLikeABoss Right! Nice catch
This video is intentionally conflating prominence with height, two things that have clear definitions.
@@eslnoob191 except the core of the earth has an equally amorphous distinction
Highest point: Chimbarazo
Tallest point:Mount Everest
Tallest point in the winter: K2
Most prominent fully climbamble mountain: Mount Denali
Most prominent mountain knowing its the tallest base to peak: Mauna Kea
Tallest mountain with no surrounding mountain range: Mount Kilimanjaro
Tallest mountain from tectonic height
Mauna Loa
These are the qualifications here to put into consideration when discussing the tallest mountain
tallest non-volcanic mountain with no surrounding mountain (inselberg): mulanje massif
Most death: K2
tallest mountain in my pants : texas
I think Kilimanjaro is also the most dominating (i.e. the one with the largest radius without a taller mountain).
There’s another for “tallest above surrounding land level”, maybe Chimborazo, don’t remember.
@@magicmulder denali is tallest above surrounding land level
To have been on top of the chimborazo, the view is utterly amazing. It was one hell of a workout though. 8 hours of climbing, starting at 11pm, and arrive to the top right on time for the sunrise.
Wowzer. Sounding an enlightening life experience
OMG are the Ecuadorian Andes ever beautiful. I did the opposite as you - I climbed Tungurahua (which was erupting at the time, so it wasn't safe to go all the way to the top, but I was able to get about 4,000 metres a.s.l.), during the day, and watched the sun set behind Chimborazo before camping the night (and watching the small ash eruptions, illuminated by the moonlight...stunning). You don't even have to be a geology nerd to look at all of that land between the Cordillera Occidental and Cordillera Oriental, and recognize that this is a place where massive tectonic plates are colliding. The very ground itself is folded into waves of mountains and hills, the scale of which is hard to perceive until you examine it from a high place.
I really wanted to climb Chimborazo too - I did drive up to the lower refúgio in the national park, and climb a bit past the higher one (which is only a couple hundred metres above, iirc), stopping at around 5,350 metres a.s.l. or so. Problem was, I was only in Ecuador for about 12 days, and to go all the way to the top would've required at least a couple days of solid acclimatization at one of those refúgios, and I didn't want to spend that time. Chimborazo's summit is at 6,263 metres a.s.l. which is more than twice the height I was actually starting to get used to (in Quito, though I'd only been there for a day, so I was still adjusting, and I hadn't been up Tungurahua yet). I have no regrets though...I spent a wonderful 3 days in the Amazon rainforest (almost stepped on a lethal fer-de-lance snake which was sunning itself on a leafy trail, camouflaged so well that my two guides didn't actually notice it and *_stepped right over it before I got there_* ...when I pointed it out, they immediately took action to keep me away), another 2 days climbing and camping on the El Reventador volcano (which was also erupting, so I got to see some wonderful lava flows, unlike anything I'd ever seen before at other volcanoes), and 3 days in the south of Ecuador, one in the historic city of Cuenca, one visiting an active gold mine near the Peruvian border (got to go ~100 metres underground to see some of the local geology) and finally a day boating around in the mangrove swamps near Machala. Such a great country, I have only positive memories.
Yeah I hope to climb Chimborazo one day that would be amazing
Can a novice climb that mountain?
Who the hell starts a hike or a climb at 11pm?
Fun Trivia: Nanga Parbat literally means "Naked Mountain" and Dhaulagiri means "White Hill/Mountain" and Himalaya(s) means "House of Ice (Like the house where Ice lives)"
I am indian so I know that since this is hindi language atleast for nanga Parbat
Very uncreative naming in the end, even if it sounds nice.
@@vast634 yeah, they are more creative than "Rocky mountains"
@@rpb4865 LMFAO
@@vast634 well 'dhaula' from dhaulagiri also means dazzling or beautiful so its either one of these. And for nanga parbat local name which I don't remember means "huge". In most cases local names meaning is better than world known names. Like incase of mt everest is known locally as 'sagarmatha' which means goddess of the sky or head of the great sky, much better than named after some British surveyed named everest.
The atmosphere is what decides.
Everest is the highest in the atmosphere, which is the same as measuring its height above sea level. If there is any doubt, ask a climber if you suffer the same when climbing Chimborazo or going beyond 8000 m.
Yeah I feel like I just wasted 7 minutes of my life before I came to the same conclusion.
How far does it reach into the atmosphere, that’s objectively the highest.
Well.... Surprisingly, the atmosphere is not the same everywhere (I just googled that). And it seems that atmosphere could shrink or expand depends on the temperature, which doesn't make a good point of reference for height
Yeah that’s my point
@@AndreMillerSwag the question is what's the tallest not what's the highest
@@dbrokensoul so what, compare Chimborazo with Everest when atmospheric conditions are the same and tell me which one is most difficult.
Even Chimborazo in bad weather, Everest in good conditions is most demanding due to the elevation in the atmosphere.
As someone who majored in Geography, I love seeing the Earth's geoid being discussed in a video. Our planet is a complex, fascinating place.
You ‘majored’ in geography? May I ask what type of job prospects come with that degree?
@@krogdog Quite a lot, actually. Try Googling GIS, AKA geographic information systems. Basically, designing maps using data sets. This can be used for everything from city planning and disaster relief to population statistics and wildlife tracking. There's also Remote Sensing, which is basically analyzing the Earth's surface via satellite imagery. It's commonly seen in movies in which they "zoom and enhance" on spies, fugitives, etc. In reality, it can be used to survey remote areas, measure plant growth, weather forecasting, analyze geological formations, locate hidden structures, etc. It's basically like taking photos with the most powerful cameras and using different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum as filters. There's tons of demand for analysts from businesses and the government.
@@krogdog Geographers can study anything, because everything happens SOMEWHERE.
I got my M.A. in Geography, specializing in cartography. I also named our departmental softball team: the Oblate Sphereoids.
Don't tell that to flat earthers, you'll get lynched, berated or annoyed to death at best.
@@Polymathically Really cool
1:54 ...". Where neighbouring plates are bumping, grinding or spreading apart".. thank God i was not the only one who thought of it that way 😭😂..
Never even crossed my mind. No reason for PBS to have these kinda jokes. I know it was accidental but pointing it out is what’s unnecessary. It’s like the word come, kids don’t know the dirty version so no need to even highlight it if it comes in a sentence that can be seen as dirty to adults.
Can I just say I love this channel, found it recently. I’m 40 and a lifelong PBS fan and supporter when I’m able. Never too old to learn something new! THANK YOU!
As a geologist, I always thought it was ridiculous to measure anything by "sea level" a number that quite literally changes multiple times a year and is not the same everywhere. Trying to calculate elevation in the past requires complex assumptions of sea level in the past. Crust rebounds due to less ice weight while levels rise and fall in summer and winter plus tidal forces due to how close or far the sun and moon are from the earth and how round or less round the earth is and... I am having flashbacks from geophysics class
I always suspected measuring by sea level was fishy!
Maybe it would be far more practical if we just changed "tallest mountain on earth" with "currently tallest mountain on earth". Nothing is fixed in time, not even the world, so nothing is fixed nor eternal.
It has more to do with the mountain being further into the atmosphere, with less barometric pressure at the top and less oxygen which ultimately is what makes mountains hard to climb and why Everest takes almost 2 months and Chimborazo can be done in a day
It's good that they DONT measure stuff by sea level then. It's measured by mean sea level.
nevermind multiple times a year, sea level changes multiple times a day with the tides.
2:15 There are certainly huge currents, deep underground, that carry material up through the mantle. It's just not molten. This is a common misconception. *The mantle is nearly 100% solid.* It is, however, plastic in nature, meaning that it can deform without breaking, and so solid hot material can rise through the mantle, and solid cold material sinks. Melting only occurs at very specific places along plate boundaries (and at hot spots). Moreover, with rare exceptions (e.g. kimberlite pipes, where diamonds come from), all magma is melted in the top 100 km of mantle. Given that the mantle is almost 3,000 km thick, barely any of it is liquid.
I did appreciate the discussion of the ridge-push vs. slab pull (as the primary cause of plate tectonics) debate. That is something you rarely see in videos of this nature, so good job!
Finally, I have actually climbed part-way up Chimborazo volcano...awesome mountain, but the air has almost exactly 50% of the oxygen at sea level, so if you aren't acclimatized to these conditions, it's like you take 3 steps uphill and have to rest for a minute (barely exaggerating). It's nice too, because you can DRIVE to 5,100 meters above sea level on Chimborazo, so even if you aren't willing to climb up a (dormant) volcano, you can experience this oxygen deprivation for yourself, without much effort *(and you get to be further away from the center of the Earth than anywhere else on the planet's surface).* Also, you get to observe some killer geology (lots of evidence of both faulting and folding near Chimborazo, as the plates colliding have smushed the crust up), plus all the vicuña you could ever hope to see. If you're up for a cool adventure (with beaches, Amazonian rainforest, cloud forest, and some of the highest mountains on Earth...including a few extremely lively volcanoes), go to Ecuador! [Peru gets all the attention amongst Andean nations, but Ecuador is just as interesting. And they use the US dollar as their official currency, so it's pretty easy to just hop on a plane and check it out.]
so the mantle is kinda like really really hard to deform clay?
@@mastershooter64 Exactly. Most of the Earth's mantle convects at between 1 and 20 cm (~0.5 to ~8 inches) per YEAR, while there are areas of faster mantle movement (mantle plumes) in which the speed is more like 50 cm (~20 inches) per year.
If you drive up there are cars really affected by the lack of oxygen?
@@samuelmade5776 Yes. In fact, even in Quito, which is "only" ~2,800 meters above sea level, there is fairly bad air pollution (relative to the number of vehicles on the road) due to the incomplete combustion of fuel (you get a lot of partially-combusted hydrocarbons - i.e. particulate matter or soot - being emitted, and some carbon dioxide is replaced by the toxic carbon monoxide). In addition to increased pollution, internal combustion engine vehicles lose significant horsepower due to the lower efficiency of the engine at altitude.
Still, cars have been successfully driven well in excess of 6,000 meters above sea level, so despite the aforementioned issues, they somehow still function.
That’s a stellar hot tip!
3:04 Sri Lanka: _"Wait, I'mma come with you!"_
I loved this episode! So clear explanation! Thanks Joe and PBS! 😊
*one of the questions I always had in my mind, also mean sea level is pretty confusing, if we could somehow calculate the thickness of earth crust below that mountain it would be the perfect key to measure the correct mountain height*
Then you might just get some puny mountain on what happens to be some extra thicc crust.
That wouldn't work, because there is not a distinct limit where the crust ends and the mantle begins. Imagine the crust becoming kind of like a lava sponge the more you go down, with ever increasing pockets of lava. Where do you draw the line? You can't. Also it's constantly shifting and changing at a much faster rate than the mountain tops.
It doesn’t matter whats below sea level, we’re land creatures, we don’t climb sea mountains
This is a good idea (though in practice might be hard to measure with much precision with existing or even future technology since the transition zone between crust and mantle is likely inherently more fuzzy than that between a mountain peak and the air above it).
Moreover, since the crust is naturally lighter/less dense than the thick, fluid mantle, its buoyancy means that there is likely to be just as much crustal rock below a high mountain range/massif as above it - i.e. there are upside-down ranges/massifs that "root into" the mantle that make total crustal thickness correlate (albeit imperfectly) with height above whatever "baseline" (e.g. the surface of an "average representative geoid"?) you care to think of. For this reason, mountains rising out of the (much thinner) crust below the oceanic seafloor (like Moana Kea) are less likely to have deep crustal "roots" (into the mantle) than those that rise atop an already high plateau (like the Himalayas piling up on the edge of the Tibetan plateau).
Bottom line: the answer to this seemingly simple question is potentially VERY complicated and there may even be no single universally "correct" way of answering it...
@@PeloquinDavid *Calls it a good idea*
*Goes into detail as to why it's a terrible idea*
*Doesn't realize the question has already been addressed, therefore wasting everyone's time*
Wow, dude...
Everest never claimed the tallest mountain title tho, it was only the highest peak in the world
it is surprising how nepal has 8/10 tallest mountain
Really isn't, just science🤷
Incredible information and visuals in this video. 10/10!
The puns are top quality, never seen higher ✋😑👌
how tf u commented 1 hr ago when the video was just uploaded
You are a hacker this wasn’t posted an hour ago
How tf can this comment be an hour old?
Maybe it came from unlisted or private video before deploying it
@@shiehuapiaopiao Early access perk by being a Patreon supporter.
If we measured mountain heights from the center of the Earth, then the mountains on other planets would be huge!
lol funny
Constantly changing, as well!
With Earth being the largest terrestrial object in the solar system, Mt. Chimborazo would still be the tallest mountain measured from the planet's core.
@@dorderre he’s saying distance from those mountains on other planets to Earth’s core specifically. Not just any planet’s core.
That’s what makes their “height” unassailable by Earth mountains. The distance is literally supplemented by outer space.
@@asw654 Oh.
So we just need to find the planet furthest from Earth, even in other star systems, and that's the tallest "mountain"? Ok ^^
You've made a mountain of information easy to understand. Thanks.
0:59 . . . I wonder if he made an attempt at pronouncing Kanchenjunga in the outtakes before the director just went with “this one.”
LOL i was thinking of the same thing.
To combine some of the questions: where is the base of some of the extraterrestrial mountains? I've heard in the past about Olympus Mons being the highest, but could never find how they measured the elevation with respect to the "bottom". What would be the Martian equivalent of "Sea Level" they would use, or would they go by something else? I've looked, never found the answer.
This isn't a real answer but a guess; I would assume that they either imagine where sea level would be if there was an ocean, or they average out the elevation of the parts of the Martian surface that aren't mountains, valleys, or canyons
This is a astute assessment. The base is so massive as well. It is so massive, you wouldn't even notice the gradual increase of elevation.
It's a datum surface level, 0 surface on mars is equal to a surface pressure of 6.105 millibars.
I've always had a problem with this. An ellipsoid is used as well, the zero-elevation reference. Its calculated by finding a bodies closest ellipsoid to its areoid or geoid in Earth's case. On Earth the geoid is define by the mean sea level based on the Surface gravity at a given point. Mars clearly has no sea level so a metric was created to "mimic" Earth's sea level. The old way was to use the triple point of water since above that elevation liquid water can't exist; however, that would make Everest's elevation negative by about -30km. The current metric for Mars instead takes the gravity potential at average equatorial radius. This is better. It is worth noting the average ocean depth is 3.7 km and most of the Earth's equator is below sea level. I couldn't find the average equatorial radius of Earth using the sea floor but I would assume it would lower the zero-elevation. This radius couldn't decrease by more 3.7 km so, if we add that to Everest's elevation above sea levelwe aren't above 12 km. So Olympus Mons still towers above Everest by around 10 km.
@@SBEBS11 my mind after reading your comment: 💥
Lol
"Ain't no mountain hiiiigh enough!"
"Highest" quality content.
1:53 GLAD HE SAID SOMETHING
7:00 the Beaches in Ecuador are further away from the center of the earth than the summit of Everest
8:06 Aw I want to hug Chimborazo. I want to be close to the stars so I will give it to Chimborazo!
I've been to it. It's a gorgeous, massive volcano high on the Ecuadorian altiplano.
I absolutely loved this episode because this is one of the biggest issues I have with Mountain measurements. I knew Denali was one of the longest hikes, but did not know the Chile mountain. Thanks for "Peaking" my curiosity!
Chile mountain? You mean Chimborazo? It's in Ecuador.
8:11 The editor complimenting a dad joke with another dad joke is the crest of dad humor.
Interesting analysis video! Thanks for uploading!
The animation showing the convection cells at 2:13 is incorrect, specifically at the subduction zones. The cycling arrows should be paired moving in the same direction, descending from the subducted slab towards the outer core. They are misrepresented here, shown as opposing each other, which is not how convection cells flow. Convection cells always move in the same direction as each other at their boundaries. Just sayin...
3:38 makes no sense. Everest is measured from sea level, a reference that allows negative values, but a concept that does not exists on other balls. if measured from the deepest point of ocean, Everest would be 19700 m ... what puts its it above rheasilvia and much closer to Olympus mons ...
There's some dispute about the tallest mountain from base to peak on land. Rakaposhi in Pakistan also rises ~5900m above it's base in a single slope (the same height as Denali base to peak). In fact, Rakaposhi's slope is the highest unbroken slope anywhere on land.
Dhaulagiri, Annapurna and Nanga Parbat also display immense increases in sheer vertical rise of around 5-6000m.
Where does a slope end?
@@Tondelli1 Anywhere there's an outcropping large enough to stub your toe on.
(This may not be consistent with the definition that OP used.)
Great video. This was very interesting.
Saying Prominence is the most important is like saying you’re a “grower not a shower”…makes you feel better and that is about it
About time that every place on the Equator starts to build structures in competition. This way we can reach new heights to place antennas for proper communications! I had the honor to fly over Everest, too cold for me to even try to climb it. Chimborazo would be on my bucket list once they build a slide I will scale it and slide down!
Step one: find molehill
Love these videos!
Loved the content
Such guts to recognize Tibet right at the first frame of the video. Poking the dragon who happens to manufacture everything you own. XD
6:15 So without oceans, Earth is a badly peeled boiled egg.
6:20 just a friendly reminder, that image is highly exaggerated to explain the phenomenon
Great work 🥳🥳🥳 Thank youuu 💜💜💜
The best and right way to measure the mountains heights is measure the air pressure on them. Its very important cause water boiling temperature changes on different heights.
For example in Himalayas or somwhere in Mexico you cant just boil the soop, you need special sealed pot called pressure cooker to make your meal well cooked.
"*People not to scale, obviously" made me laugh
Great video!
Man your presenting skills are amazing.
I thought that the difference between the tallest (greatest distance from top to bottom, Mauna Kea) and highest (greatest distance from top to sea level, Everest) was well accepted (and don’t understand why the latter is thought about more). Quick Google search tells me it is taught in primary school
Also there is a mountain in Equador that is the highest if you start measuring based on the center of the Earth.
@@joaopedrocruz6432 I don't think we can use the center of the earth as a strating point because the earth isn't perfectly round and bulges at the equator.
thhe fact that you couldn't varify that from your own primary school experience and needed to google it, is explaination enough as to people memories, experiences and subsequent attitudes.
@@swirvinbirds1971 I think it's just as valid as the others. Closest to the stars/furtherest from Earth's centre is a really good contender for highest/tallest peak to me!
@@firstname405 You emphasize it being "closest to the stars," but it's also lower in the atmosphere than Everest...
2:05 oh you knew you ducking already knew
This is a space observatory in Sth American that's on top of a mountain, but when it rains, the ground obsorbs the rainfall and expands enough for it to upset the space observations and the observatory has to recalibrate its equipment for the observations to remain 'in focus' every time it rains and depending on how much it rains.
That was a mountain of information you threw at us, thanks !
6:25 note: the gravity of the moon causes a tidal buldge along the equator, towards the moon; other side buldges due to inertia of the system. The earth rotates within this entire equatorial tidal bulge. This is also why when the sun and moon line up twice a month, you get a higher total gravitational influence and the cause of spring tides. ❤
The portion of the ocean closest to the moon is experiences the greatest pull towards it and bulges in that direction. The portion of the ocean opposite the moon experiences the least pull and bulges away from the moon.
My favorite little tidbit to the Himalayan Mountains is it has marine fossils due to the closure of the Tethys Sea from the tectonic movement.
Great video🎉
Bumping, grinding, spreading apart…🤣🤣🤣
What's so funny about that? Maybe the joke is lost on different culture and native language, enlighten me
@@Napoleonic_S American euphemisms for sex...
A smoothed out ellipsoid model is probably best. That should be most consistent with differences in gravitational pull and thickness of atmosphere.
My next favorite is furthest from the gravitational center. "Closest to the stars" is very poetic.
And 3rd is measuring from the base. That determines both how imposing the mountain appears and the actual height climbed (though not necessarily difficulty, because of atmosphere determined by (I think) ellipsoid model).
I agree
The 'base' is basically impossible to define
Wow. I never knew how much I didn't know. Great video! New sub.
I knew a couple of the reasons why it's difficult and almost didn't click on the video, so glad I did though! Still learned a few new things! Never assume you know everything about a subject, even if you're an expert! (Not saying I am about this or really any topic lol)
Which peak has the lowest mean atmospheric pressure?
That would be Everest, hands down.
If mountains where separate entities it would make sense to measure from their base, like we measure our hight head to toe. And then Everest would win. For me Chimborazo is the winner. It is simply the tallest place on earth, the thing that sticks out the most.
Touring AK, I heard Denali is higher than Everest base to peak. I really don't know how mts are measured but, our guides always give that info.
The problem with the “farthest thing away from center” approach is that by your definition the “tallest mountain” doesn’t even have to be a mountain. On earth it just happens to be that the farthest away point is a pretty tall mountain, which makes your approach seem plausible. However imagine a planet that’s quite big and almost spherical but slightly ellipsoidal. Imagine it being perfectly smooth with a big mountain on its “short side”. Now the tallest mountain of that planet is a totally flat spot on the stretched side,despite there being a big mountain on the other end. The only conclusion would be the entire stretched-out section is the mountain but calling half a planet a mountain is a bit of a stretch. What I’m trying to argue (in a very lengthy way) is that being farthest away from the earth’s centre doesn’t make a spot tall or even a mountain at all. The great thing about sea level measuring is that the median sea level stays the same. That’s why Everest is indeed very much the highest elevation and therefore the tallest mountain on earth.
When considering “bottom to top length” it very quickly becomes a problem of definition. However the tallest mountain can be defined pretty well.
@@hii4973 You're working backwards.
You're presenting it as if merely being the point farthest from the center of the Earth makes it a mountain, and the TALLEST mountain at that. That's flawed.
Before the "tallest mountain" can be measured to the center of the Earth, it must first be a mountain.
That qualifications are already better defined.
That's why Chimborazo wins: it's a mountain (one necessary qualification) AND it's the mountain whose peak is farthest from the center of the Earth. It's a two part test, which relies on references that are more stable and definitive from a relative measurement standpoint. Determining wear the base of one mountain stops and the next starts is SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult and contentious than finding the center (or theoretical center) of the geoid.
@@DeadlyPlatypus In my example of the "oval" earth I took it to the extreme calling a completely flat surface a mountain. But let's take a step back. Let's assume there is indeed a mountain at that farthest away spot on the plane and its 1km high, relatively to the surface of our nearly-spherical-but-not-quite world. On the "short side" of our planet there's a mountain 2km high relative to the surface. For people standing in front of both mountains it's obvious the 2km peak is higher. I think we can agree that it all comes down to a point's height in comparison to some even surface. Our different positions lie in the question what even surface to measure points against.
Your farthest-away--point concept assumes a perfectly spherical surface which I think is arbitrary. The average sea level is given by gravity's effect on water (with all rotational forces included) and therefor is a perfect indicator of what the earth's shape actually is. As we know it's not perfectly spherical and the average sea level is a slightly ovaloid sphere.
It's because of the average sea level's meaningfulness (that being "where is gravity strongest around the earths surface") that it's being used as the zero-height measuring point. The average sea level is describing (through gravity)
earth's actual shape which then should be used to measure the height of a point. So the Mount Everest is the farthest-away-point, not from the centre of an arbitrary theoretical sphere but from earth's theoretical even surface, dictated by gravity.
PS: Using a perfectly spherical earth as reference for measuring would mean water in many places on earth is flowing uphill.
PPS: Love the discussion so far, sorry for the lengthiness :)
@@hii4973 Really nice and i agree with you. For me the even funnier/better thought experiment would be to "build" a 10km high mountain on one of the Poles. It still wouldnt reach the same distance from the centre of the earth as the sea level on the equator. Meanwhile the peak would be out of the troposphere so it would be probably unclimbable or the hardest mountain on earth, meanwhile there just has to be something just barely qulify as mountain on the equator to be a higher mountain.
I guess i dont like the defenition of farthest away from the centre of the earth.
Subscribed because of the bumping, grinding... statement. Lol
Knowledge with humor? I'm there!!
I like the mean sea level base model.
It provides a coherent relation between altitude, presure, temperature and atmospheric composition/density.
It's actually pretty simple to apply the geoid model to GPS measurements (for example of a mountain peak). I would say the tallest mountain is the one who's peak has the highest geoidal height. This would be the place on the Earth's surface with the lowest gravitational pull and hence where a given object would have the lowest weight.
I think there are two pieces wrong in your comments
1) lowest gravitational pull would reduce weight..i agree but we also need to consider mass of an object (i.e F= MA). Lowest gravitational pull would not guarantee lowest weight. Depends on the mass and acceleration to calculate gravity force.
2) geoidal height/easy to calculate in a satellite model...what's your source that this is easy? We don't have every single point in the earth mapped out or calculated (there are still undiscovered parts of our world) so we don't have a 100% accurate model. As a result, any formula we can think of will have assumption or correction factors...we may be able to build a model but it will only be accurate up to a certain confidence level (I.e we will be 90% confident that the model accurately represents the shape of the earth) which is not the same as saying "the model is a 90% accurate model of the earth".
3) regardless of the above, even if we had 100%. Effects of gravity are so small we can't measure gravity...it's not like we have walking gravity readers like a Geiger counter or OHM detector...
Either way, I think the crux of this entire debate is to define what is definition of tallest. Is it tallest in the atmosphere, tallest to a mean sea level, tallest from center of earth (which will have large assumptions the deeper we get into the earth), tallest or longest slope, etc. Or to your point, at what point is the earth does a human experience the lowest gravitational pull on the summit. The lowest recorded gravitational earth pull on the summit would indicate the average human is far from the center of the earth
@@cheetah219 My proposition is that we should measure heights on Earth based on the geoid. The geoid is an irregular surface which has the same gravitational strength (pull). It is the shape the oceans would take if variables like wind and tides were ignored. Whilst the solid surface of the Earth varies by about 20km, the surface of the geoid varies by about 200m. In layman's terms the geoid IS sea level or "the atmosphere" but with the external variables removed.
1) As you say, what we call weight is actually just a measure of the force experienced by a given mass x gravitational acceleration. Lowest gravitational pull would absolutely guarantee the lowest weight of a given mass as I stated.
2) As you say, current geoid models are not perfect. That was not my point. That aside, the current world geoid EGM2008 (Earth Gravitational Model of 2008) is a 2.5' grid of height differences from the mathematical ellipsoid to the geoid with an accuracy approaching 10cm. The previous iteration was sub 1m. Even at 1m accuracy I think that is good enough to say which mountain is tallest based on the geoid.
How do I know applying a list of grid heights to GPS measurements is easy? I do it a couple of times a week using RTK GNSS. By ticking a box & selecting the correct file I can literally walk around and get geoidal heights in real time.
3) Yes, the gravitational force is very small / weak but we absolutely have "walking gravity readers". They are called gravimeters. I first saw one used on an episode of MythBusters many years ago. It was so sensitive that the operator could see measurable differences as the cast members walked around the instrument. The mass of a human body being on one side or the other of that thing made a measurable difference! Essentially if a gravimeter were taken to each of the tallest peaks and gravity measurements were taken, it is my proposition that the "tallest mountain award" would go to the peak with the lowest gravitational acceleration.
As to the original question posed by the video, what method of measurement do we think should be used to determine the "tallest mountain"?...
Should we use distance to the center of the Earth? The Earth isn't spherical so that isn't really fair.
Should we use distance from bottom to top? Better, but is 20% of a mountain sticking out of the ocean really "taller" than one whose summit is higher above sea level?
The geoid is a model of equal gravitational potential. Absent of external factors like wind and tides, "sea level" follows the geoid. Absent of external factors like wind, the atmosphere also follows the geoid.
If you were to somehow have a veeery long hose filled with water with one end at the top of each of 2 mountains, water would flow out of the lower end until the water level at the higher end was "level" with the open lower end (according to the height above the geoid). That sounds the fairest method to me. The highest point on Earth's surface is the point you cannot make water flow to using a pipe (from elsewhere on the Earth's surface, without using a pump etc). It is also the point which would have the least dense air (external factors aside) and would take the least amount of energy to achieve a vertical takeoff into space.
I love the .86 m on the everest height when a single blow of the wind can move a bit of snow and change the last figures in seconds and when the height is poorly defines at +-10 meter anyway
no the peak of everest is rock.
Great video
I personally am leaning towards measuring from tip to space.
Height makes me think of up, the sky, space.
So it just feels right to assume whatever is closest to the stars.
Measured from the ocean floor, the tallest mountain in the world is Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii!
The tallest, not the highest
@@mountainmanthe3rd Semantics!
It’s actually a volcano
It makes way more intuitive sense to me to measure mountains from base to peak, making Denali the tallest. Like, I live in the PNW, and I've been to Utah and Colorado. Yes, the mountains in Colorado are beautiful and majestic, but let me tell you, Mt Rainier is on an entirely different scale of impressively massive, even though its peak is about the same height above sea level as all of those Fourteeners in Colorado.
The convention used to find a mountain's base is known as topographic prominence, measured from the lowest encircling contour (horizontal cross section at the col between two parent peaks) which does not contain any higher summits within it. A mountain's wet prominence is exactly its elevation from sea level while its dry prominence ignores the ocean surface and descends all the way to the lowest submersed valley. While the dry prominence of Mauna Kea is 9456 m, its lowest encircling contour meets Mt. Everest's contour in the Pacific and from there has a lower relative height. Mount Everest's LEC descends to the Challenger Deep, making its total dry prominence 19,759 m, the tallest mountain in the world by far by this metric.
How do u decide whats a mountains base then. Couldnt you argue on that too.
@@CharlieQuartz Topographic prominence is useful as a local metric for measuring mountains in the same range but it gets silly when it's used to measure the tallest mountain in a range because that results in using a local metric non-locally. More importantly, the encircling contour line is not considered the base. Rather, the terms "col" and "key col" are used because "base" is not well-defined.
How "tall" something is - which is what the video is about - is the distance between the bottom and top of that thing. With a person or a building, that's easy to define, but the whole point is that it's not so easy with mountains. Using the key col between the tallest summit in a range and the tallest summit in a completely different range (or the Challenger Deep for Everest) gets silly.
The Challenger Deep is unrelated to the Tibetan Plateau as geographic features; the former is a result of the interaction between the Pacific and Marianas plates and the latter the Eurasian and Indian plates. The key col of Denali is in Nicaragua, with the parent peak being Aconcagua which again is kind of silly because again, the two mountains and the key col are all unrelated geographic features. It'd be like measuring the height of the World Trade Center using Death Valley as the "base", or the height of the Burj Khalifa from the Dead Sea Depression, or declaring a tent on the summit of Everest to be the tallest man-made structure in the world using the Challenger Deep as the "base".
@@lunatickoala As you say, there is no objective metric which properly defines the "base" of a mountain, so in absentia I think prominence is the closest we have which can compare measurements without the messy business of choosing the regional boundary of a mountain range or significantly isolated peaks.
@@CharlieQuartz Mean sea level is already the standard metric defining the "base" of a mountain in that a mountain's height is nearly always given by the distance from sea level. Prominence may be useful as a local metric of how prominent a peak is but when comparing peaks from disparate regions, I think it's actually worse than just using height above sea level, especially for the tallest local peaks.
Kangchenjunga has a height of 8586m and a prominence of 3922m while Everest has a height of 8848m and a prominence of 8848m by definition. When there's a result like this, it should be asked whether there's a meaningful qualitative difference between the two or whether one of the metrics has a shortcoming. The two mountains are not particularly different. They're both peaks in the Himalayas sitting on the Tibetan Plateau. Just comparing these two indicates that prominence is failing to properly convey either how tall or how high a mountain is. If anything, it'd be more useful if the height of the parent peak was measured from the height of the highest child col.
this guy is entertainment + information its perfect👌
Wow. Great information
This channel never disaapoints.
The puns are peak comedy indeed!
If I recall correctly, mean sea level doesn't actually mean how you described it. It's really just the average low tide level.
There's a complex mathematical model that extends the mean sea level inland, taking into account how the gravity lumps (including the mass of the mountains that we're measuring!) would pull this imaginary surface higher or lower than the spheroid model. The resulting shape is called the geoid.
It's partially counter-intuitive, that the fact that tall mountains are massive (i.e. has big mass), pulls the geoid level up, and lowering their own height measurement!
Interesting! So why not we define the highest mountain as a point where the gravity is the weakest? This in a sense would mean we are at a point where we are farthest from the weighted mean of all the mass that we call earth! And I mean weitghed as in weighted by gravity contribution.
Well do do the Geoid of the Earth, every part of the earth would have a point based on gravity at where the water surface would be, the mean sea level would then be more localized, and you could represent where the Sea level would be as a distance from the center of the earth, giving you a similar model to the geoid, but more smooth, that represents the Datum of the earth.
I'm still waiting for someone to build an 8850m skyscraper (simply measured from the ground below, put it on top of a smaller mountain easier to access like the Colorado Rockies if you really want a height record by all measurement methods) with an observation deck/sky diving platform on top and making tourism in Nepal/Tibet mostly obsolete (unless in the unlikely event the building is put there). Would be interesting to see how to build and run a building that needs the top half of it heated and pressurized 24/7 year round.
You really think taking an elevator to the top of an observation tower would attract the same type of people who risk their lives mountaineering on Everest? Those experiences are nothing alike. People don't just climb mountains to be able to see from high up. You could just take a plane for that. I would hardly say it would make tourism to the _nations_ of Nepal and Tibet obsolete until the build a big tower on top of one of their mountains.
@@DaimyoD0 pfft Everest is a joke now to anyone with $100k, no climbing experince even required, though if you like being a dumbass with alot more risk $20k can get it done. Hell at this point the only thing missing are permanent ski lifts to the top with a $50k ticket price that includes a McDonald's at every base camp. Put the building foundation in Colorado at around 2000m in elevation so the top is 10.5km (assuming there is no plane traffic around it). A few elevators would be just a more comfortable and safer version of that Everest ski lift.
Imagine building this ON the Everest
@@elwan_ Then easy access to the ground floor would be the problem. At least most of the Rockies can potentially have roads up to 3713m (Trail Ridge Highway max elevation), though getting permits to put the world's tallest building in the middle of a national park could be problematic, but there's plenty of spots still above 2000m without that problem.
I am still waiting for a geosynchronous space elevator.
3:45 As opposed to on mars where you *don't* need a space suit to hang out on the summit.
Wow. This channel really reached new heights with this video.
Highest mountain is also not the same as the tallest. Mauna Kea is a competitor from base to peak (9330m) to Mount Everest, where Everest is higher above water.
Also Both Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa sink a further 8km into the crust due to sheer mass, making their true height from the beginning of their eruptive history to present is closer to 56,000 feet
@@jakealter5504 stop using Freedom Units
@@fg009letyrds8 ??
If you think defining “tallest mountain” isn’t straight forward try define “the base” of Mauna Kea. I can guarantee you it doesn’t work.
So who do you separate it's base??
Considering that Everest should be considered a wonder of nature, but is littered with discarded equipment, climbers' trash and corpses, perhaps the wise thing would be to just leave things as they are rather than induce some other peak to become trashed in the same way. Besides, all the sherpas live in Nepal and they might have to move if some other peak were to be chosen as the tallest.
Never knew some of that stuff. We never stop learning. I can see why it is really difficult to measure the tallest mountain.
I think it’s pretty simple. First, it’s tall vs high. Tall is the total feet of the mountain from base to tip. High is how high above sea level the tip is. That’s unambiguous. Second, we can differentiate between on land or submerged.
So if the height of a mountain is measured from sea level, what about underwater mountains like the mid-Atlantic ridge? Is that not technically a mountain range, or is it measured differently from mountains above sea level?
I think underwater mountains are typically measured from base to summit, but I'm not sure
To simplify, let's call them underwater stalagmites.
@@junkgum They are called underwater trenches.
I grew up in an age where metric & imperial were taught side by side - most of my mates could easily convert timber & bricks from one t’other (a piece of 4” x 2” timber was 100mm x 50mm, a UK brick was 215mm or 8”, etc). It became second nature for our ‘boomer’ generation.
I kinda miss the ‘29,028ft’ that I always associated with Everest, as a kid. Still, gotta adapt to changes, of course.
But we’re living in the 21st century now, so it’s time to finally catch up with the rest of the world.
@@kellydalstok8900 True ... such as it is.
A trillion tonnes per kilometre. The crust averages roughly 100 km in depth.
If we stopped calling Everest the tallest mountain, maybe people would stop trashing it. There are really 4 mountains in contention
Mount Everest: Highest point above sea Level
Mount Kilimanjaro: Tallest from Base ground level to summit
Mauna Kea: Tallest from base level to summit (including from the Ocean floor).
Mount Chimborazo: farthest from the center of the earth.
1:51 Me at gym workout. Heard this, immediately pick up my phone and check what app I am listening to.
I think the title should go to the peak that "feels" the highest when standing upon it, and that will come down to how thin the atmosphere is. By that measure, I think we have it right with Everest.
Yes but, imagine you have a very high up valley that does not have a pick just a slope... Does that qualify as the highest mountain? Does it even qualify as a mountain? (I know that's not the case currently in this planet, but for sure somewhere)
Correct. This also helps explain part of why winter ascents are much harder.
I agree. Since the air pressure changes quickly, I would use the strength of gravity. The place with the lowest acceleration due to gravity wins.
@@peterbonucci9661 Your intuition is reasonable, but there is only problem. Altitude is not the only variable that influences the force of gravity at any given location on the planet. For example, centrifugal forces due to the planet's rotation result in gravity being weaker at the equator. Another factor is the non-uniform density of the Earth itself.
@@McPickleness measuring g with a falling object would remove the centrifugal force from the measurement. I think that's how they did it in the 50s. I'm sure there is a better way now.
Since the air pressure depends on local gravity, I'm OK with that. I think it's worth it to avoid calculating the mean sea level.
You can sort heights with this method, but you can't really covert g to feet (meters) height. It does work on any planet, even if it doesn't have an ocean.
1:04 i love that you wrote their Nepali and Tibetian name- Sagarmatha & chomolungma which are its real name.
It’s extremely Eurocentric to rename a sacred mountain for a English name. The real name should be Sagarnantha or Chomolungma
Wait in our S.S text book it says that tibetians call the mount everest sagar matha
@@tperm5329 sgarmatha is one word not two and it is called that by many nepali tibeten and all other nepalelese.
the chinese tibeten call it chomolungnma
I live in Colorado Springs, Colorado, home of Pikes Peak. Until relatively recently it was listed as being 14,110 feet tall. Now it has been remeasured and they say it is 14,115 feet tall.
3:50 wilhelm scream
It's basically the same as getting a precise measurement of a coast line. How far up do you look at the coast to take your measurement? What level of tide? If you're at ground level, do you measure around each craggy rock outcrop, each cove going inland, each grain of sand?
Which mountain summit would experience the least amount of downward gravity? Basically, which mountain pokes out the furthest from Earth's lumpy gravity well?
Mt Chimborazo in Ecuador has the least amount of apparent gravity at its peak (9.76 N/kg).
It also has the least amount of true gravity, if you remove the centrifugal effect from this calculation (9.79 N/kg). This is what gravity would be on this mountain, if you were to slow the Earth down to a halt, so that it is locked to the distant stars, and somehow force it to keep its existing shape while doing so.
@@carultch Actually it is Huascaran peak (due to Earth's rotation and local gravity anomalies).
@@ikipemiko Thank you for filling me in. Do you know what its summit gravity is, by any chance?
I know of only one way to assess height of a geological formation: from its base to its peak. My Everest's bottom level still is many metres above the surrounding range.
Mauna Loa rises from the sea floor to its summit thousands of metres high above. But people count only the visible portion: above sea level.
I would love a video on sea "level" I had no idea it wasn't level persay I knew it was wider at the equator but having valleys and hills was mind blowing
I would think mean sea level combined with mean atmospheric level might be a good way to balance out the battle, as a mountain that extends higher into the death zone seems more probable as the highest since the atmosphere is less susceptible to the geoid /gravity lump effect.
I just love it when people try to overcomplicate things. Everest is tallest, you measure from sea level, end of story.
Town I grew up in had Mount Eustis, which is a hill, and Manns Hill, which is a mountain.
IMO the proximity to space is a much more meaningful metric for being tall than distance from mean sea level.
1:59 XD when 2 moutens really love each other :D
So Everest is the "highest" but not necessarily the "tallest"..
I thought it was K2 east or the Himalayas or something or in Hawaii
@@connergalles7106Himalayas is a mountain range, not a mountain.
HIGH implies marked extension upward and is applied chiefly to things which rise from a base or foundation or are placed at a conspicuous height above a lower level.
TALL applies to what grows or rises high by comparison with others of its kind and usually implies relative narrowness.
I think Everest is the highest and the tallest.
The top of Chimborazo is the furthest point from the center of the Earth, just that.
Mauna Kea is amazing. Went up there couple years ago. I want to move back to Hawaii so bad.
From Nepal and been watching be smart for more than five years now damn I really now know about mountains now
🤍🤍No matter what...we cannot deny the fact that...Mt Everest is a beautifully shaped mountain....🔥🔥🔥
Scammer Detected!!!!!!
@@worldofscience3668 stereotype detected!