Science
The highest mountain in the world is not the Everest
Almost everyone would claim that there is no higher, but they would be completely wrong.
Mount Everest, or just Everest, located in the Himalayas and marking the border between Nepal and China, is 29,035 feet high. Eight kilometers high for those who follow the metric system, a number that makes you dizzy just reading it, doesn’t it? It is, according to what we have all been taught since childhood, the highest mountain in the world. But is such a statement really true? It depends on how you look at it, but there are strong reasons to say no, that there is another one higher.
If you have already discovered that the size of maps does not correspond to the size of countries in real life, get ready to discover that the highest mountain on Earth is not Everest, but a volcano in Hawaii called Mauna Kea. Here’s why it’s higher than the top of the Himalayas, and more importantly, why almost no one remembers it when they claim there’s nothing higher than Everest.
The world’s highest peak
Here is the main reason why almost everyone claims that Everest is the highest mountain in the world and forgets about the Mauna Kea volcano. The reason is much simpler than it seems, since the difference lies in whether we measure from the ground (sea level) or take into account that one of them starts from the bottom of the ocean.
From sea level, Everest reaches a height of 29,035 feet, while Mauna Kea is far behind at 13,803 feet. The key is that the aforementioned volcano has about 60% of its body under water (about 15,200 feet), so if we add both numbers, it is correct to say that Mauna Kea measures no more and no less than 29,032 feet. By the way, it is worth knowing that it is an inactive volcano, as it is estimated that its last eruption was more than 4,000 years ago.
In addition, another of the highest mountains in the world is the K2 (Karakorum Range), another of the great mountain ranges of Asia along with the Himalayas. It is no less than 28,251 feet high.