Fact 2 of 10
2. The point farthest from the Earth's center is not the summit of Everest
Everest is the highest mountain above sea level. But the point on the surface farthest from the Earth's center is the summit of Chimborazo, a volcano in Ecuador, about 2 kilometers farther away.
The blame lies with the planet's waistline
The Earth is slightly flattened at the poles and wider at the equator, because of its rotation. The diameter from one side of the equator to the other is about 43 kilometers larger than the pole-to-pole diameter.
Chimborazo stands about 6,260 meters above sea level, well below Everest. But it sits almost on the equator, where the planet is widest, while Everest lies much farther north. As a result, Chimborazo's summit is about 2.1 kilometers farther from the Earth's center.
There is also a third way to measure a mountain: from base to summit. By that measure, the champion is Mauna Kea in Hawaii. It rises just over 4,200 meters above the sea, but it starts at the bottom of the ocean, and from end to end it exceeds 10,000 meters.
Everest's height also changes. In 2020, China and Nepal jointly announced the measurement of 8,848.86 meters. And the mountain keeps rising a few millimeters a year, because the Indian plate keeps pushing into the Asian one.
Did you know? Because of this shape, gravity also varies slightly: it is marginally weaker at the equator than at the poles. A precision scale would show a slightly lower weight for the same person at the equator.
