I think we can agree that certified tall boi Mount Everest is a rather large natural structure. But as it turns out, it’s even bigger than what we thought.
Mount Everest: now with more Mount Everest
The height of Mount Everest, which sits on the border between Nepal and China, has been a topic for debate for some time. According to the Guardian, the former 8,848 metre Nepalese measurement was taken from the Survey of India back i 1954. This included the snow that rested on the apex of the mountain.
Comparatively, China’s measurement of 8,844.43 metres was taken back in 2005 and only included the rock height.
Now this stalemate has come to a conclusion, and the new measurement is higher than either of the previous ones.
Both countries recently sent expeditions to the mountain and used a combination of GPS and trigonometry to make their calculations.
“Once the surveyor’s beacon had been placed on the summit, surveyors at stations around the summit measured the distance from the six points to the beacon, which meant at least six triangles could be calculated to determine the mountain’s height,” Jiang Tao, associate researcher at the Chinese academy of surveying and mapping, told the China Daily.
Both parties came to the agreement that Everest is now 8,848.86 metres high.
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Hang on, how did it get even taller?
Taking the snow element out of the equation, there is another explanation for why Mount Everest is getting taller.
The Himalayas — the mountain chain that Everest is located on — sits atop the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates. As the two continue to collide against one another they push the Himalayas upwards.
It’s estimated that this could result in the Himlayas, and Mount Everest, growing by about 1cm a year.
That’s not alarming at all…