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It`s Okay To Be Smart, Why No One Can Agree What’s REALLY the Tallest Mountain

Why No One Can Agree What's REALLY the Tallest Mountain

- Between Nepal and Tibet in the Himalayas

sits a mountain so tall

that it stretches into what's known as the death zone.

Temperatures here can hit minus 60 degrees Celsius.

The air contains only a third of the oxygen

we need to survive.

And yet, thousands of people have braved

these harsh conditions to stand here

at the highest point on the planet.

Or is it?

Everest checks in at 8,848.86 meters tall today.

But we still don't really know if that's right.

Because on a planet that isn't perfectly round

wrapped in a crust that keeps moving,

measuring a mountain turns out to be

way harder than you think.

(lively music)

Hey smart people, Joe here.

To someone alive in the 18th century,

Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador

was the tallest mountain on Earth.

Then in 1808, that honor shifted to Dhaulagiri,

until 1847, when this one stole the title,

which had only held for five years,

until Mount Everest was measured

as the officially verified

definitely tallest mountain on Earth.

So it's settled then, right?

Well, it's not that simple.

How you measure a mountain,

depends on how you define what a mountain is.

And surprisingly, there's no universally accepted rule

for what a mountain means.

Even since the first official measurement of Everest

almost 200 years ago,

its height has changed many times.

Some of that is because different people

have done the measuring.

Some of it's due to changes in technology,

and a big part of it is because mountains

aren't the massive unchanging things that they appear to be.

But before we tackle that climb,

first we need to talk about

how to make a mountain in the first place.

You probably learned in school,

that the Earth's crust is broken up into plates,

like a giant moving jigsaw puzzle.

Mountains mostly happen where neighboring plates

are bumping, grinding, or spreading apart.

I just now realizing how that sounds.

As those processes play out,

it can change a mountain's height

depending on when you measure it.

You might be imagining our tectonic plates

floating on the molten mantle the way logs float on a river.

And that's kind of right.

There are huge currents, deep underground,

caused by heat from the core rising up

and carrying molten rock towards the surface,

and then cooling and sinking back down.

But that's not the only reason the plates move.

In some places, denser crust sinks under lighter crust.

And as that heavier crust falls,

it pulls the rest of the crust behind it,

like a weight tugging on a pulley.

And after that sinking crust melts,

it can bubble up and build pressure until boom,

you've got a volcanic mountain.

In other places,

plates meet like a slow geologic car crash,

crumpling up the rock and shoving it towards the sky.

This is how some of Earth's biggest mountain ranges formed.

Everest and the rest of the Himalayas, for example,

started growing when the Indian plate

slammed into the Eurasian plate

about 40 to 50 million years ago.

And that tectonic smash is actually still continuing.

You can even get mountains where plates pull apart.

That mostly happens under water,

at places like the Mid-Atlantic ridge,

which is the longest mountain range on Earth.

These processes happen pretty much

everywhere we find mountains,

and not just on Earth.

Some extraterrestrial peaks make ours look like

puny little ant hills.

I mean, remember that Everest

is just over eight kilometers tall.

Well, a crater ridge on Vesta, a large asteroid,

is around 19 kilometers high.

And a ridge around the equator of one of Saturn's moons

might be even taller.

And the Martian volcano Olympus Mons is as wide as Arizona

and around 22 kilometers high.

If Olympus Mons were on Earth,

you'd need a space suit to hang out on the summit.

It's so big that the entire Hawaiian island chain

could fit inside of it.

That's nuts.

So why can't Earth mountains get that big?

Well, for starters, the processes that make mountains

are also strong enough to destroy them.

Massive amounts of rock are broken when plates collide,

and then they're eroded away

by weather, rivers, rock slides, even glaciers.

And since Earth's plates

are essentially floating on a hot rock soup,

if a mountain gets heavy enough, it starts sinking,

basically melting from the bottom,

which keeps them from achieving those otherworldly heights.

And while the happy little mountains

you might see in a Bob Ross painting

may look nice and peaceful.

- There lives a happy little mountain.

- What goes on beneath the surface is pretty darn violent.

In 2015, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Nepal

made some peaks in the Himalayas instantly shorter

by up to 60 centimeters.

But Everest is actually still growing taller every year,

as the Indian plate keeps

slowly slamming into the Eurasian plate.

So will it hold the title of tallest Earth mountain forever?

Maybe not.

Nanga Parbat in Pakistan is growing faster than Everest is.

And it might overtake its famous neighbor

in the next couple hundred thousand years or so.

And because of all of these things,

like weight and erosion,

and even the weird fact that the pointier

a mountain gets at the peak,

the faster it gets worn down,

there's probably a maximum height

that an Earth mountain can get,

and those super peaks in the Himalayas pretty close to that.

But when it comes to the title of tallest,

Everest only wins if we choose to measure mountains

in a specific way.

Because finding the top is only half the equation.

You also need to find the bottom,

and that's not as easy as it sounds.

More than half of Hawaii's Mauna Kea is submerged.

So there's only about 4,200 meters showing above the water,

but from base to summit,

it's actually more than 10,000 meters tall.

That's like 20% taller than Everest.

And if we just look at base to summit measurements on land,

then Denali wins.

Everest only takes the title, because most of the time,

we measure mountains from sea level.

Everest just starts higher.

But that's actually tricky too,

because even sea level isn't level,

thanks to physics acting on our planet.

Since Earth's crust is denser in some places than others,

stronger gravity creates hills and valleys of sea level

all around the Earth.

And forces from Earth's rotation,

cause it to bulge around the equator,

so the radius in Ecuador

isn't the same as the radius in Antarctica.

So scientists basically smooth all of this out

to create a mean sea level, not like angry,

I mean, mean, like average.

That's the zero elevation we use

to measure mountains against.

Some of this may sound overcomplicated.

Why don't we just measure mountains

by the distance from the center of the Earth?

Well, if we do that, Everest loses again.

The maximum distance from Earth's center

is actually Ecuador's Mount Chimborazo.

The summit of Chimborazo is more than

two kilometers farther from the center of the Earth

than Everest's peak is,

even though it's two and a half kilometers shorter,

according to sea level.

So if you climbed Chimborazo,

you'd actually be closer to the stars

than anywhere else on Earth.

So couldn't we just settle all

this elevation uncertainty once and for all

using something like GPS?

Well, satellites and space lasers

can easily measure how far away the top of a mountain is,

but they also suffer from that problem

of deciding what bottom to use.

Not to mention they're traveling on orbits

that aren't perfectly circular

or on a planet that's not perfectly spherical either.

So, when measuring how high something is using GPS,

the zero point there is set using

an imaginary mathematical model of the Earth

called the ellipsoid,

which is different from mean sea level,

and it doesn't account for any of those gravity lumps

that we talked about.

But these days the commonly accepted view

is to measure a mountain's height above mean sea level.

So Everest gets the title of tallest,

despite other mountains

having pretty strong claims to the throne.

So to summit all up,

it's pretty easy to figure out where a mountain ends,

but not everyone agrees on where a mountain starts.

So when it comes to figuring out

what's really the tallest mountain,

maybe first we should get to the bottom of that.

Stay curious.

Hey guys, you notice that little thing up there?

Well, the PBS Digital Studios Family on YouTube

is a huge family of some of the best educational programming on YouTube.

Have you checked out PBS Terra yet? They have got new science shows

that “anti-body” will love. Anyway . . .

If you want to know what would happen if you lived forever,

well, check out Far Out. It explores the future of science

and technology and culture - how these changes might affect humanity and all life on Earth.

Want to know what's keeping you still watching this video right now?

Well, check out Why Am I Like This? It looks at the evolutionary biology

of the human body and how we ended up with all of the quirks that make us us.

Just check the links down in the description below to see what's happening over on PBS Terra.

If you haven't subscribed to them, you're missing out.

Go do it. What are you waiting for?

You're going to love it.

If videos like this one peak your interest.

Well, like, subscribe, leave a comment for the algorithm,

and maybe you'd like to support this show on Patreon.

There's a link down in description where you can learn more.

Look at these names, you could be one of them.

We've got a lot of great perks.

We recently updated the different levels

of how you can support the show.

Get cool new perks like this one,

submitting a dad joke for me to read

at the end of the episode.

You know how they say,

mountainous plateaus are the highest form of flattery.

Okay, fine.

Become a patron, submit one,

it'll probably be better than that.

I'll see you in the next video.

- [Man] That thing point no snudge?

- No, I mean, she goes.

Ha ha, well she does.

Yeah, that's right, Gav.

Yeah.

No fault of yours.

There's a good geology joke everybody.

Why No One Can Agree What’s REALLY the Tallest Mountain Warum sich niemand darauf einigen kann, was wirklich der höchste Berg ist Por qué nadie se pone de acuerdo sobre cuál es REALMENTE la montaña más alta Perché nessuno è d'accordo su quale sia davvero la montagna più alta Waarom niemand het eens kan worden over wat nu eigenlijk de hoogste berg is Porque é que ninguém consegue chegar a acordo sobre qual é REALMENTE a montanha mais alta Neden Hiç Kimse Gerçekte En Yüksek Dağın Ne Olduğu Konusunda Anlaşamıyor?

- Between Nepal and Tibet in the Himalayas |||Tibet|||

sits a mountain so tall

that it stretches into what's known as the death zone.

Temperatures here can hit minus 60 degrees Celsius.

The air contains only a third of the oxygen

we need to survive.

And yet, thousands of people have braved ||||||braved

these harsh conditions to stand here

at the highest point on the planet.

Or is it?

Everest checks in at 8,848.86 meters tall today.

But we still don't really know if that's right.

Because on a planet that isn't perfectly round

wrapped in a crust that keeps moving,

measuring a mountain turns out to be

way harder than you think.

(lively music) lively|

Hey smart people, Joe here.

To someone alive in the 18th century,

Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador |Chimborazo||Ecuador

was the tallest mountain on Earth.

Then in 1808, that honor shifted to Dhaulagiri, ||||||Dhaulagiri

until 1847, when this one stole the title,

which had only held for five years,

until Mount Everest was measured

as the officially verified

definitely tallest mountain on Earth.

So it's settled then, right?

Well, it's not that simple.

How you measure a mountain,

depends on how you define what a mountain is. depends||||||||

And surprisingly, there's no universally accepted rule e||||||

for what a mountain means. for||||

Even since the first official measurement of Everest

almost 200 years ago, almost||

its height has changed many times. |||||times

Some of that is because different people

have done the measuring. you have|||

Some of it's due to changes in technology, Alcuni|||||||

and a big part of it is because mountains

aren't the massive unchanging things that they appear to be.

But before we tackle that climb,

first we need to talk about

how to make a mountain in the first place.

You probably learned in school,

that the Earth's crust is broken up into plates,

like a giant moving jigsaw puzzle. ||||puzzle|

Mountains mostly happen where neighboring plates

are bumping, grinding, or spreading apart. |bumping||||

I just now realizing how that sounds.

As those processes play out,

it can change a mountain's height ||||mountain|

depending on when you measure it.

You might be imagining our tectonic plates

floating on the molten mantle the way logs float on a river. |||molten||||||||

And that's kind of right.

There are huge currents, deep underground,

caused by heat from the core rising up

and carrying molten rock towards the surface,

and then cooling and sinking back down.

But that's not the only reason the plates move.

In some places, denser crust sinks under lighter crust.

And as that heavier crust falls,

it pulls the rest of the crust behind it,

like a weight tugging on a pulley. ||||||pulea

And after that sinking crust melts,

it can bubble up and build pressure until boom,

you've got a volcanic mountain.

In other places,

plates meet like a slow geologic car crash,

crumpling up the rock and shoving it towards the sky. crumpling|||||shoving||||

This is how some of Earth's biggest mountain ranges formed.

Everest and the rest of the Himalayas, for example,

started growing when the Indian plate

slammed into the Eurasian plate |||Eurasian|

about 40 to 50 million years ago.

And that tectonic smash is actually still continuing.

You can even get mountains where plates pull apart.

That mostly happens under water,

at places like the Mid-Atlantic ridge,

which is the longest mountain range on Earth.

These processes happen pretty much

everywhere we find mountains,

and not just on Earth.

Some extraterrestrial peaks make ours look like

puny little ant hills.

I mean, remember that Everest

is just over eight kilometers tall.

Well, a crater ridge on Vesta, a large asteroid, |||||Vesta|||

is around 19 kilometers high.

And a ridge around the equator of one of Saturn's moons

might be even taller.

And the Martian volcano Olympus Mons is as wide as Arizona ||Martian||Olympus|Mons = mountain|||||

and around 22 kilometers high.

If Olympus Mons were on Earth,

you'd need a space suit to hang out on the summit.

It's so big that the entire Hawaiian island chain ||||||hawaiiana||

could fit inside of it.

That's nuts.

So why can't Earth mountains get that big?

Well, for starters, the processes that make mountains

are also strong enough to destroy them.

Massive amounts of rock are broken when plates collide,

and then they're eroded away

by weather, rivers, rock slides, even glaciers. ||||||glaciers

And since Earth's plates

are essentially floating on a hot rock soup,

if a mountain gets heavy enough, it starts sinking,

basically melting from the bottom,

which keeps them from achieving those otherworldly heights. ||||||not of this world|heights

And while the happy little mountains

you might see in a Bob Ross painting ||||||Ross|

may look nice and peaceful. ||||peaceful

- There lives a happy little mountain.

- What goes on beneath the surface is pretty darn violent.

In 2015, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Nepal

made some peaks in the Himalayas instantly shorter

by up to 60 centimeters.

But Everest is actually still growing taller every year,

as the Indian plate keeps

slowly slamming into the Eurasian plate. |slamming||||

So will it hold the title of tallest Earth mountain forever?

Maybe not.

Nanga Parbat in Pakistan is growing faster than Everest is. Nanga|Nanga Parbat||Pakistan||||||

And it might overtake its famous neighbor |||to overtake|||

in the next couple hundred thousand years or so.

And because of all of these things,

like weight and erosion,

and even the weird fact that the pointier |||||||pointier

a mountain gets at the peak,

the faster it gets worn down,

there's probably a maximum height

that an Earth mountain can get,

and those super peaks in the Himalayas pretty close to that.

But when it comes to the title of tallest,

Everest only wins if we choose to measure mountains

in a specific way.

Because finding the top is only half the equation.

You also need to find the bottom,

and that's not as easy as it sounds.

More than half of Hawaii's Mauna Kea is submerged. ||||Hawaii's||||

So there's only about 4,200 meters showing above the water,

but from base to summit,

it's actually more than 10,000 meters tall.

That's like 20% taller than Everest.

And if we just look at base to summit measurements on land,

then Denali wins. |Деналі|

Everest only takes the title, because most of the time,

we measure mountains from sea level.

Everest just starts higher.

But that's actually tricky too,

because even sea level isn't level,

thanks to physics acting on our planet.

Since Earth's crust is denser in some places than others,

stronger gravity creates hills and valleys of sea level

all around the Earth.

And forces from Earth's rotation,

cause it to bulge around the equator,

so the radius in Ecuador

isn't the same as the radius in Antarctica.

So scientists basically smooth all of this out

to create a mean sea level, not like angry,

I mean, mean, like average.

That's the zero elevation we use |||висота над рівнем моря||

to measure mountains against.

Some of this may sound overcomplicated. |||||overcomplicated

Why don't we just measure mountains

by the distance from the center of the Earth?

Well, if we do that, Everest loses again.

The maximum distance from Earth's center

is actually Ecuador's Mount Chimborazo. ||Ecuador||

The summit of Chimborazo is more than

two kilometers farther from the center of the Earth

than Everest's peak is, |Everest||

even though it's two and a half kilometers shorter,

according to sea level.

So if you climbed Chimborazo,

you'd actually be closer to the stars

than anywhere else on Earth.

So couldn't we just settle all

this elevation uncertainty once and for all

using something like GPS?

Well, satellites and space lasers

can easily measure how far away the top of a mountain is,

but they also suffer from that problem

of deciding what bottom to use.

Not to mention they're traveling on orbits

that aren't perfectly circular

or on a planet that's not perfectly spherical either.

So, when measuring how high something is using GPS,

the zero point there is set using

an imaginary mathematical model of the Earth

called the ellipsoid,

which is different from mean sea level,

and it doesn't account for any of those gravity lumps

that we talked about.

But these days the commonly accepted view

is to measure a mountain's height above mean sea level.

So Everest gets the title of tallest,

despite other mountains

having pretty strong claims to the throne. ||||||throne

So to summit all up,

it's pretty easy to figure out where a mountain ends,

but not everyone agrees on where a mountain starts.

So when it comes to figuring out

what's really the tallest mountain,

maybe first we should get to the bottom of that.

Stay curious.

Hey guys, you notice that little thing up there?

Well, the PBS Digital Studios Family on YouTube

is a huge family of some of the best  educational programming on YouTube.

Have you checked out PBS Terra yet?  They have got new science shows

that “anti-body” will love. Anyway . . .

If you want to know what would  happen if you lived forever,

well, check out Far Out. It  explores the future of science

and technology and culture - how these changes  might affect humanity and all life on Earth.

Want to know what's keeping you  still watching this video right now?

Well, check out Why Am I Like This?  It looks at the evolutionary biology

of the human body and how we ended up  with all of the quirks that make us us. |||||||||||||stranezze||||

Just check the links down in the description  below to see what's happening over on PBS Terra.

If you haven't subscribed  to them, you're missing out.

Go do it. What are you waiting for?

You're going to love it.

If videos like this one peak your interest.

Well, like, subscribe, leave a comment for the algorithm,

and maybe you'd like to support this show on Patreon.

There's a link down in description where you can learn more.

Look at these names, you could be one of them.

We've got a lot of great perks.

We recently updated the different levels

of how you can support the show.

Get cool new perks like this one,

submitting a dad joke for me to read submitting|||||||

at the end of the episode.

You know how they say,

mountainous plateaus are the highest form of flattery. mountain|plateaus||||||підлабузництво

Okay, fine.

Become a patron, submit one,

it'll probably be better than that.

I'll see you in the next video.

- [Man] That thing point no snudge? |||||nudge

- No, I mean, she goes.

Ha ha, well she does.

Yeah, that's right, Gav. |||Gav

Yeah.

No fault of yours.

There's a good geology joke everybody.