eli5 Is Mt. Everest the tallest mountain relatively?

238 views

By this I mean a mountain that starts at sea level and goes to 10,000ft will be higher relatively than a mountain that starts at 7,000 feet and goes to 10,000 thousand.

In: 6

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Mt. Everest (8,848 m) is the highest by altitude (height above mean sea level).

Mt. Chimborazo (6,263 m) in Ecuador is the furthest surface point from the center of the earth. This is due to the fact that the Earth is not a perfect sphere, but bulges at the equator (the technical term is oblate spheroid).

Mauna Kea (4,207) in Hawaii is the tallest if you measure from base to peak, since its base is underwater. That height is 10,210 m.

But the king of all mountains isn’t on Earth, its on Mars.

Olympus Mons rises a staggering 21.9 km above the Martian equivalent of sea level (called the datum) and an even more impressive 26 km tall when measured from local base to height. It dwarfs anything on Earth. And its not just tall, its wide as well. Its base area is about 300,000 km^(2), roughly the size of Poland (312,696 km^(2) ) or Arizona (295,234 km^(2) ). The caldera at its peak has a radius of around 85 km, giving it a rough area of 23,000 km^(2), about the size of New Jersey (22,591 km^(2) ). But despite these massive numbers it would be, assuming you had a space suit, a relatively easy climb. Not only is gravity about 1/3 of earths, but the slope has an average grade of only 5%.

You are viewing 1 out of 5 answers, click here to view all answers.