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[Beestie]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

There isn't even a straight answer to the height of Everest. Do you measure from the rock, which is never exposed? or the top of the snow, which varies seasonally? Do you measure from sea level? What is that, anyway? Do you take the satellite measurements or the trigonometric measurements? Etc.

Sea level. 29,000 feet exactly. But the record books say 29,001 because they don't want the reader to think the figure is rounded.

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by Beestie

Sea level. 29,000 feet exactly. But the record books say 29,001 because they don't want the reader to think the figure is rounded.

But sea level varies, not only with lattitude, but also longitude with relation to the surrounding landmasses. (The East side of the Atlantic, eg is about two feet higher than the west side (or maybe its the other way) due to the spinning of the earth, even at the same lattitude.)

So the concept of "sea level" where Everest is is fuzzy, since there is no sea there. A hypothetical sea level would depend on surrounding landmasses, which can vary with our hypothetical sea.

You might resort to "mean global sea level" but then I ask, averaged over what period? Sea level is not stable and hasn't been for hundreds of thousands of years.

At best we might say "betweeen 8,840 and 8,850 meters above mean sea level averaged over the last 100 years as it would be applied to the location of Everest if said location was in the middle of an open ocean, which it isn't."

And use metric you bloody peasant. :p

ETA: but Why use sea level? Why not measure the distance from the centre of the Earth? (This would in fact give the "Highest Mountain" prize to some mountain in central America whose name I can neither find nor remember. Due to the oblate shape of the Earth, its peak is almost 2,000 meters further from the center of the Earth than Everest's is.)