Height!

December 5th, 2020| Topic: RaMbLeS | 2

The Nepalese call it Sagarmatha, “Peak of Heaven.” The Tibetans, Chomolungma, “Mother Goddess of the World.” Most others call it “Everest,” after Sir George Everest, the British Surveyor General of India in the mid 1800s. Though it was an Indian mathematician and surveyor, Radhanath Sikdar, who was first to discover it was the highest mountain in the world, at 29,029 feet.

Said Roxanne Vogel, 35, one of the more recent of Everest’s conquerors:

That’s the closest to heaven, or the closest to outer space, that I will ever get on this Earth. It’s kind of life-changing, when you’re up there.”

29,029 feet above sea level. Or so they have said since a 1955 survey.

But all kinds of problems exist in determining the peak’s height.

Where is sea level? It varies across the globe, and changes with climate, the rotation of the earth, etc. So sea level is measured at multiple points across the globe and a mean sea level is calculated.

But where would the sea be, if it were under Mt. Everest? After all the earth is ellipsoidal, not a sphere. So more corrections.

(Actually if you measure mountain heights from the core of the earth, which some scientists think is a safer constant, Ecuador’s Mt. Chimborazo is about 7,000 feet farther from earth’s core than is Mt. Everest’s summit. And, if you were simply to measure from peak to base, Hawaii’s Mauna Kea would win the contest, even though most of it is underwater!)

What about changes in gravity, caused by the huge mountain mass, that affects sea level? So now gravity surveys have to be conducted.

And isn’t the mountain itself moving, plate tectonics pushing the Indian plate under the Eurasian plate, causing our “Mother Goddess” to grow?

So it’s being done all over again: both China and Nepal sent survey teams up Everest with GPS receivers recently. Data analysis is still being conducted with results expected soon.

One of the Nepalese surveyors stayed atop the peak for the maximum permitted time of two hours … and lost a toe to frostbite.

Said Dinesh Manandhar, a GPS expert from Nepal who teaches at the University of Tokyo:

It’s a harsh environment there, very windy, and you can have battery power problems. They can’t stay atop Everest for more than half an hour. They’re already exhausted.”

The surveyors have to connect their GPS receivers to multiple satellites, measure the thickness of ice and snow below them down to the actual rock of the mountain using ground-penetrating radar, and so on.

Sridevi Jade, chief scientist at India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research thinks:

Everest is gaining about 1 cm every 10 years—or about a foot, every 300 years.”

We’ll find out ….

But one thing we know:

God is …

… the LORD Most High over all the earth;
You are exalted far above all gods.
Psalm 97:9

And …

… the LORD Most High is to be feared,
A great King over all the earth.
Psalm 47:2

Indeed …

My shield [is] the Most High God,
Who delivers the upright in heart.
Psalm 7:10

So …

I will give thanks to LORD for His righteousness,
and will sing praise to the name of LORD Most High.
Psalm 7:17

For …

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
Psalm 91:1

Secure because …

… you have made the LORD, my refuge—
the Most High—your dwelling place.
Psalm 91:9

Yes, …

It is good to give thanks to the LORD
And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High.
Psalm 92:1

SOURCE:
NPR