The highest mountain in the world? That has to be Mount
Everest, surely? Well, yes … if measured from height above sea level. But if
you specify tallest rather than highest, thus implying that sea level has
nothing to do with it, then the winner – very easily – is Hawaii’s Mauna Kea.
Mauna Kea is a volcano that started life on the seabed of
the Pacific Ocean and had already reached a height of 6,000 metres (20,000
feet) when it broke the surface. Its upward progression since then has “only”
been 4,200 metres (13,800) feet, which sounds puny when set aside Mount
Everest’s 8,900 metres (29,000 feet), but if both the sub-surface and
above-surface heights of Mauna Lea are allowed as measurements of its height
when added together, the volcano out-performs the mountain by about
three-quarters of a mile!
It all depends on perspective. Many people would say that Tanzania’s
Mount Kilimanjaro (5,900 metres, 19,300 feet) is more impressive that Mount Everest
because it rises above a flat surface, whereas Everest is surrounded by the
many other high peaks of the Himalayas.
On the other hand, if you were to measure the heights of
points on the Earth’s surface by their distance from the centre of the planet,
that would throw all the records out of joint because Earth is not a perfect
sphere and the Equator is about 13 miles further from the planetary centre than
the Poles. By that reckoning, the coast of Ecuador is higher than the
Himalayas!
© John Welford
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