Ecuador’s Mount Chimborazo Is Higher Than Mount Everest

There is a bad news for all those who thought they had scaled the highest mountain in the world by climbing Mount Everest. According to recent studies, it seems that the Himalayan Mountain is not the highest on planet Earth, and that position goes to Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador.

Technically speaking, standing tall at a height of 8,848 meters above sea level, Mount Everest in Nepal should be the highest peak on Earth. In addition, Mount Everest is almost 2,000 meters higher than its nearest rival outside the Himalayan range, such as the Aconcagua in the Andes. However, according to a report in the New York Times, Mount Everest is just the highest when measured from the sea level.

The confusion of which is the actual contender for the tallest mountain comes down to the curvature of our planet. The tallest mountain is in fact the Chimborazo in Ecuador, a mountain whose altitude at 6,268 meters may be lower than the Everest, but its peak is actually closer to space in comparison to the Everest. The earth is a sphere, but not a perfect one. The shape is flatter at the poles but bulges out at the center, which makes the Earth's radius 21 kilometers greater than the equator. On the basis of the comparison from the center of the Earth, the Chimborazo stands at an approximate 6391 kilometers to the 6382 kilometers of Mount Everest.

Furthermore, the position of the tallest mountain actually goes to the Manua Kea in the Pacific, which measures 10,000 meters from its base on the ocean floor. In addition, as far as mountain heights go, Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro is the tallest free standing mountain at 5,895 meters.

As per a report in the Independent, Mount Everest gets the honor of being the highest peak only when measured from sea level. However, if measured from the center of our planet it won't be included even in the top 20 positions of highest mountains.  Furthermore, it is the hard climb to the top of the Everest that adds to its popularity, because it takes about two months of work whereas one can ascend the peak of the Chimborazo in a duration of two weeks.