Autumn in Switzerland ❤🧡💛
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The summit of Chimborazo, in Ecuador, holds the interesting distinction of being the farthest point from the center of the Earth. If you are confused, I understand. After all, shouldn’t that be the same as the highest elevation since the Earth is a sphere? As it happens, the Earth is not actually spherical. The centrifugal force of its spin gives it a significant bulge around the equator. In other words, if you shrunk the Earth down to the size of a desktop globe and measured its circumference, you would find that if you stretched your measuring tape around the equator, it would be noticably larger than if you wrapped it from pole to pole. Chimborazo stands at only a single degree of latitude below the Equator, making its peak very slightly (about 2 km) further from the center of the Earth than Everest’s. Here is a super-duper scientific image to demonstrate the difference:
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The peak of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea stands below even the base of Everest, which might make it seem an odd choice for this list. The base of the mountain, however (as of its sister-peak Mauna Loa), lies at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean’s abyssal plain, giving it a rise that dwarfs all of the above. Measured from its deep-sea base, Mauna Kea rises over 10000 meters, nearly doubling both Everest and Kilimanjaro, though only a tiny portion of the mountain is above sea level. Nonetheless, it is another claimant.
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