Be Smart - 2022-07-22
SUBSCRIBE so you don’t miss a video! ►► http://bit.ly/iotbs_sub We’re on PATREON! Join the community https://www.patreon.com/itsokaytobesmart ↓↓↓ More info and sources below ↓↓↓ Check out Far Out on @pbsterra : https://youtu.be/jpUjze3v_6c Check out Why Am I Like This? on @pbsterra : https://youtu.be/eWzBNfBnFys 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? References: https://sites.google.com/view/references-tallest-mountain/home Special thanks to our Brain Trust Patrons: paul andre bouis Mark Littlehale Ali Freiburger Mehdi Damou Barbora Bei Ken Board Clinger-Hamilton Family Attila Pix Burt Humburg Roy Lasris dani bowman David Johnston Salih Arslan Baerbel Winkler Robert Young Amy Sowada Eric Meer Dustin Karen Haskell Join us on Patreon! https://patreon.com/itsokaytobesmart Twitter http://www.twitter.com/DrJoeHanson http://www.twitter.com/okaytobesmart Instagram http://www.instagram.com/DrJoeHanson http://www.instagram.com/okaytobesmart Merch https://store.dftba.com/collections/its-okay-to-be-smart Facebook https://www.facebook.com/itsokaytobesmartpbs/
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 🤓
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
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
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. 😂
Hahahahaha I know this one 🤣🍻
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
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
Who did what in a sentence?
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.
it is surprising how nepal has 8/10 tallest mountain
Really isn't, just science🤷
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 ^^
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
The Hawaiian mountain theory is flawed. Because we can measure Mt Everest from the bottom of the ocean floor also.
Yep. It’s a loophole for US to claim the title
The point is to measure from the base of the mountain. Mt. Everest's base is firmly in dry land, so it's unfair to measure in from the sea floor.
It's the equivalent of measuring someone's height against another person but they are standing on top of a box, and you decide to measure it from the bottom of the box
Everest is not a continuous geologic structure to the bottom of any ocean. Hawaii is.
@@pc_screen5478 the base of Mt Everest is the base of the continental shelf. Same as for Hawaii.
@@rdspam the entire continent of EuroAsia is.
3:04 Sri Lanka: "Wait, I'mma come with you!"
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.
"Ain't no mountain hiiiigh enough!"
<3 your content
"Highest" quality content.
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 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.
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
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 ...
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.
Geology grad student here:
I like how plate movement is simplified and described, especially with the contextual piece on subduction-initiated volcanism. Using the term "sinking" as a substitution for "subduction" rather than "moving under" is greatly appreciated, as many misrepresent this; especially with how slab rollback and back-arc extension often play critical roles in arc volcanism, and can be inferred by the word "sinking" rather than "moving under".
I think it's worth mentioning ridge push as that piece of the tectonic puzzle is greatly influential in both the broad subduction contexts in the video though.
A note on 4:12 -- A large piece of orogenies (mountain building events) that created some of the mountain ranges mentioned in this video is not necessarily just the "crumpling up" (folding and such) from the "crash," but also Isostatic Rebound resulting from erosion after crustal thickening (think of how a boat might float higher once some weight is removed). Mountains do get very tall (and all the pressure does add up! and it can "sink" into a more flowing ductile asthenosphere (upper mantle). But the extent of it lost to, say, partial melting or flow is suspected to be very limited and is not necessarily known, as a lot of the material just metamorphoses before rising and eroding as the mountain constantly isostatically balances itself. (we are ignoring dipping here) There's some great research being done with this process in one of the oldest mountain ranges around (Appalachians) by some researchers at the University of Massachusetts if I recall correctly.
Note: I'm only 5 minutes in so some of this may have been addressed already haha. Cool video!
*edit: Would love to chat about these things if anyone wants in the replies
Rupes Nigra???
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.)
6:15 So without oceans, Earth is a badly peeled boiled egg.
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.
Mount Everest's peak is the highest altitude above mean sea level at 29,029 feet [8,848 meters].
Mount Chimborazo's peak is the furthest point on Earth from Earth's center. The summit is over 6,800 feet [2,072 meters] farther from Earth's center than Mount Everest's summit.
Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain from base to peak at more than 33,500 feet [10,210 meters].
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.
"*People not to scale, obviously" made me laugh
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.
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...
2:05 oh you knew you ducking already knew
As an geodesist, I really enjoyed someone talking about our problems, that almost noone ever talks about
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
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 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.
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.
1:53 GLAD HE SAID SOMETHING
Step one: find molehill
🤍🤍No matter what...we cannot deny the fact that...Mt Everest is a beautifully shaped mountain....🔥🔥🔥
Scammer Detected!!!!!!
@@worldofscience3668 stereotype detected!
Tallest is Manua Loa in Hawaii, when measuring from the base, tallest in terms of how high up in the atmosphere you are is Everest
So:
Mount Everest is the tallest Mountain on Earth
Maura Kea is the biggest Mountain on Earth
Olympus Mons is probably the tallest in our sunsystem
When the galaxy in infinity then there are infinite planets like earth and that means there are infinite mountains bigger and taller than Olympus Mons. Olympus is just the tallest Mountain we‘ve discovered
Its fascinating that among the top 10 tallest mountains, 8 of them are in Nepal.
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...
@besmart - 2022-07-22
So which one do YOU think deserves the title? 🏔🏆
@Moon_GD - 2022-07-22
@Don't read profile photo sure! :)
@neveraskedforahandle - 2022-07-22
Great puns, great vid. Definitely would have loved more fleshing-out of the comparisons.
@Geeksmithing - 2022-07-22
Olympus Mons on Mars as your title isn't limiting the search to Earth.😜
@adithyansv1304 - 2022-07-22
The one that's closest to the stars i guess
@mysterygirl-dq4zj - 2022-07-22
Mountain olympus for sure.