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So is the peak of Chimborazo the point on Earth with the lowest delta-v to orbit? Compared to a sea level equatorial launch, https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/8486/where-is-the-... claims a 0.2% gravitational advantage due to height, and a 0.1% advantage due to rotational velociy. Small, but not nothing.
Maybe, but how are you going to carry a rocket up there? Even building a rocket sled up a mountain seems infeasible.
If you measure height from the bottom, the tallest building on earth is probably a shack on top of a mine, and the tallest structure of any sort is an oil well.
"That makes Chimborazo the closest point on Earth to the stars." That statement sold me. If I want to be on the top of any mountain now, it's that one.
It's not an easy mountain but it's of a substantially lower degree of difficulty than the high Himalayan peaks. It's harder than the lower Ecuador volcanoes for reasons of elevation and other factors and has glaciers, etc. like they do but the weather tends to be better than mountains much further north or south. (I've climbed other volcanoes there but only made it part way up Chimborazo.) ADDED: i.e. so it's not unt…
https://www.mountainproject.com/route/110735330/standard-rou...
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From your link, the lower elevation of a dry prominence of Everest would be the lowest contour that encircles Everest. That won't be nearly as deep as Challenger Deep but a quick google search does not find the correct dry prominence for me.
The correct dry prominence of everest is the same as the regular prominence of everest, because there are no bodies of water between it and the nearest peaks.
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Think about it this way: imagine standing at the bottom of the Challenger Deep. Draw a small circle around yourself on the ocean floor. Now step outside the circle. Because you're standing on a spherical object (Earth), the area outside your circle isn't infinite like it would be on a plane. It's another finite region, which covers almost the entire Earth, and contains both yourself (standing just beside the lowest p…
>Draw a small circle around yourself on the ocean floor. That circle encloses two areas. One roughly a square metre, and the other one roughly 5e8 km². In geology only the smaller area is used, and the smaller area does not contain the peak of the Everest and thus is not considered a valid base contour line of the Everest.
This is because Earth is not a sphere - it is an oblate spheroid. As an oblate spheroid, Earth is widest at its equator. Chimborazo is just one degree south of the equator. At that location, it is 6,384 kilometers (3,967 miles) above Earth's center, or about 2 kilometers (about 1.2 miles) farther from Earth's center than Mount Everest.
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The lowest bottom of the Challenger Deep encircles the Everest. Think of the "outside" of the circle being the deepest point, and the "inside" of the circle being all rest of the Earth.
Reminds me of the joke where the mathematician is told to use a fixed length of fencing to enclose the biggest area possible and builds a tiny corral and stands inside and says "I define myself as outside the corral". (Legit point on your part, though.)
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It's not an easy mountain but it's of a substantially lower degree of difficulty than the high Himalayan peaks. It's harder than the lower Ecuador volcanoes for reasons of elevation and other factors and has glaciers, etc. like they do but the weather tends to be better than mountains much further north or south. (I've climbed other volcanoes there but only made it part way up Chimborazo.) ADDED: i.e. so it's not unt…
Looks like a few hours walk and $250 for a guide: https://www.mountainproject.com/route/110735330/standard-rou...
Even though the air around equator is thicker, you would most probably already feel very bad at the carpark at 4800m, if you would come up straight from the capital. I'd say some 5-7day acclimatization prior to this should be enough for most fit people.
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Yes, that is correct. At almost 20,000 km, the dry prominence of Everest is by definition the maximum possible on Earth. You only get to claim Kea more prominent if you use a different standard to measure it!
I'm not seeing why that is true. If one were to imagine a deep moat around Kea, wouldn't that increase its prominence w/out impacting that of Everest? Or are you suggesting that Everest's dry prominence would be measured from whatever the deepest point on Earth is? Or something else?
If you dug a moat around Mauna Kea, it would indeed increase its prominence, but would not affect the prominence of Everest. Until you dug the moat deeper than the Challenger Deep (about -11,000 m), at which point the dry prominence of Everest would start to be measured from the bottom of your moat and not Challenger Deep. At this point, digging the moat any deeper would increase the prominence of both Everest and Kea by equal amount, but Everest as the higher mountain would nevertheless always dominate Kea.
>You may be surprised to learn that Everest is not the tallest mountain on Earth, either. That honor belongs to Mauna Kea, a volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii. Mauna Kea originates deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, and rises more than 33,500 feet from base to peak. Can someone explain this? How do you differentiate "the mountain" from "the rest of the earth that it comes out of"? (Side note: the issue of "tallest mou…
It's wet :) (under water surface) The claim of the article that mount Everest is the tallest point from the earth's center happens because earth's surface, relative to its size, is as smooth as a billiard ball. Even the tallest mountains are nothing. So high mountains located at the equator can easily "outperform" higher mountains elsewhere.
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10763/is-earth-...