Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Mount Everest
Hee.. Yesterday my tuition kid asked me about Mount Everest's height.. This is wat I'd found..
Naming
In Nepal, the mountain is called Sagarmatha (सगरमाथा, Sanskrit for "Goddess of the Sky"); this name was invented in the early 1960s (by Baburam Acharya) when the Nepalese government realized that Mount Everest had no Nepalese name. This was because the mountain was not known and named in ethnic Nepal (the Kathmandu valley and surrounding areas). The Sherpa/Tibetan name Chomolangma was not acceptable, as it would have been against the idea of unification (Nepalization) of the country. However, the ancient name for the mountain is Devgiri (in Sanskrit, it means "holy mountain") or Devadurga (the English pronounced it as deodungha in the 1800s); please refer to the Harrapan archaeology site for more on the history behind the name. In Tibetan it is Chomolungma or Qomolangma (ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ) ("Mother of the Universe"), or in Chinese: 珠穆朗瑪峰 (pinyin: Zhūmùlǎngmǎ Fēng) or 聖母峰 (Shèngmǔ Fēng).
The mountain was given its English name in 1865 by Andrew Waugh, the British surveyor-general of India. With both Nepal and Tibet closed to foreign travel, he wrote:
…I was taught by my respected chief and predecessor, Colonel Sir Geo. Everest to assign to every geographical object its true local or native appellation. … But here is a mountain, most probably the highest in the world, without any local name that we can discover, whose native appellation, if it has any, will not very likely be ascertained before we are allowed to penetrate into Nepal.… In the meantime the privilege as well as the duty devolves on me to assign…a name whereby it may be known among citizens and geographers and become a household word among civilized nations.
Hence Waugh chose to name the mountain after George Everest, first using the spelling Mont Everest, and then Mount Everest. However, the modern pronunciation of Everest – IPA: [ˈɛvərɪst] or [ˈɛvərɨst] (EV-er-est) – is different from Sir George's own pronunciation of his surname, which was [ˈiv;rɪst] (EAVE-rest).
In 2002, the Chinese People's Daily newspaper published an article attacking the continued use of the English name for the mountain in the Western world, insisting that it should be referred to by its Tibetan name. Chinese marked the location Mount Qomolangma on their map more than 280 years ago, named after a Tibetans' Goddess Qomolangma, which gains ground as the peak's original name.[3]
[edit]
Measurement
Aerial view of Mount Everest, behind Lhotse, from the south.
Radhanath Sikdar, an Indian mathematician and surveyor from Bengal, was the first to identify Everest as the world's highest peak in 1852, using trigonometric calculations based on measurements made with theodolites from 240 km (150 miles) away in India. Before it was surveyed and named, it was known as Peak XV to the survey team.
The mountain is approximately 8,848 m (29,028 feet) high, although there is some variation in the measurements. The mountain K2 comes in second at 8,611 m (28,251 feet) high. On May 22, 2005, the People's Republic of China's Everest Expedition Team ascended to the top of the mountain. After several months' complicated measurement and calculation, on October 9, 2005, the PRC's State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping officially announced the height of Everest as 8,844.43 m ± 0.21 m (29,017.16 ± 0.69 ft). They claimed it was the most accurate measurement to date.[1]. But this new height is based on the actual highest point of rock and not on the snow and ice that sits on top of that rock on the summit, so, in keeping with the practice used on Mont Blanc and Khan Tangiri Shyngy, it is not shown here. The Chinese also measured a snow/ice depth of 3.5 m,[4] which implies agreement with a net elevation of 8,848 m. But in reality the snow and ice thickness varies, making a definitive height of the snow cap, and hence the precise height attained by summiteers without sophisticated GPS, impossible to determine.
The first measurement was with theodolites in 1856. Due to lack of access to Nepal at the time, it was measured from a distance. It was found to be exactly 29,000 feet (8,839 m), but declared to be 29,002 feet (8,840 m) high. The arbitrary addition of 2 feet (0.6 m) was to avoid the impression that an exact height of 29,000 feet was nothing more than a rounded estimate.
The elevation of 8,848 m (29,028 ft) was first determined by an Indian survey in 1955, made closer to the mountain, also using theodolites. It was subsequently reaffirmed by a 1975 Chinese measurement [2]. In both cases the snow cap, not the rock head, was measured. In May 1999 an American Everest Expedition, directed by Bradford Washburn, anchored a GPS unit into the highest bedrock. A rock head elevation of 8,850 m (29,035 feet), and a snow/ice elevation 1 m (3 ft) higher, were obtained via this device [3]. Nepal, however, did not officially recognize this survey, and the discrepancy with the above mentioned 2005 Chinese survey is significantly greater than the surveys' claimed accuracy.
It is thought that the plate tectonics of the area are adding to the height and moving the summit north-eastwards. Two accounts, [4], [5] suggest the rates of change are 4 mm per year (upwards) 3-6 mm per year (northeastwards), but this account[6] mentions more lateral movement (27 mm), and even shrinkage has been suggested [7].
Everest is the mountain whose summit attains the greatest distance above sea level. Two other mountains are sometimes claimed as alternative "tallest mountains on Earth". Mauna Kea in Hawaii is tallest when measured from its base; it rises over 10203 m (about 6.3 mi) when measured from its base on the mid-ocean floor, but only attains 4,205 m (13,796 ft) above sea level. The summit of Chimborazo in Ecuador is 2,168 m (7,113 ft) farther from the Earth's centre (6,384.4 km or 3,967.1 mi) than that of Everest (6,382.3 km or 3,965.8 mi), because the Earth bulges at the Equator. However, Chimborazo attains a height of 6,267 m (20,561 ft) above sea level, and by this criterion it is not even the highest peak of the Andes.
The deepest spot in the ocean is deeper than Everest is high: the Challenger Deep, located in the Mariana Trench, is so deep that if Everest were to be placed into it there would be more than 2 km (1.25 mi) of water covering it.
The Mount Everest region, and the Himalayas in general, are thought to be suffering ice-melt due to global warming. The exceptionally heavy Southwest summer monsoon of 2005 is consistent with continued warming and augmented convective uplift on the Tibetan plateau to the north.
[edit]
Climbing routes
This section does not cite its references or sources.You can help Wikipedia by introducing appropriate citations.
Southern and northern climbing routes as seen from the International Space Station.
Mt. Everest has two main climbing routes, the southeast ridge from Nepal and the northeast ridge from China, as well as 13 other less frequently climbed routes. Of the two main routes, the southeast ridge is technically easier and is the more frequently-used route. It was the route used by Hillary and Tenzing in 1953 and the first recognised of fifteen routes to the top by 1996. This was, however, a route decision dictated more by politics than by design as the Chinese border was closed to foreigners in 1949. Reinhold Messner (Italy) summited the mountain solo for the first time, without supplementary oxygen or support, on the more difficult Northwest route via the North Col to the North Face and the Great Couloir, on August 20th 1980. He climbed for three days entirely alone from his base camp at 6500 meters without the use of supplementary oxygen via the North Col/North Face route. This route has been noted as the 8th climbing route to the summit.
Most attempts are made during April and May before the summer monsoon season. A change in the jet stream at this time of year also reduces the average wind speeds high on the mountain. While attempts are sometimes made after the monsoons in September and October, the additional snow deposited by the monsoons makes climbing more difficult.
1996 disaster
During the 1996 climbing season, nineteen people died trying to reach the summit, making it the deadliest single year in Everest history.[citation needed] May 10 of that year was the deadliest day in Everest history, when a storm stranded several climbers near the summit (on the Hillary Step), killing eight. Among those who died were experienced climbers Rob Hall and Scott Fischer, both of whom were leading paid expeditions to the summit. The disaster gained wide publicity and raised questions about the commercialization of Everest.
Journalist Jon Krakauer, on assignment from Outside magazine, was also in Hall's party, and afterwards published the bestseller Into Thin Air which related his experience. Anatoli Boukreev, a guide who felt impugned by Krakauer's book, co-authored a rebuttal book called The Climb. The dispute sparked a large debate within the climbing community. In May 2004, Kent Moore, a physicist, and John L. Semple, a surgeon, both researchers from the University of Toronto, told New Scientist magazine that an analysis of weather conditions on that day suggested that freak weather caused oxygen levels to plunge by around 14%.
During the same season, climber and filmmaker David Breashears and his team filmed the IMAX feature Everest on the mountain (some climbing scenes were later recreated for the film in British Columbia, Canada). The 70 mm IMAX camera was specially modified to be lightweight enough to carry up the mountain, and to function in the extreme cold with the use of particular greases on the mechanical parts, plastic bearings and special batteries. Production was halted as Breashears and his team assisted the survivors of the May 10 disaster, but the team eventually reached the top on May 23 and filmed the first large format footage of the summit. On Breashears' team was Jamling Tenzing Norgay, the son of Tenzing Norgay, following in his father's footsteps for the first time.
Facts
As of the end of the 2003 climbing season, 1,919 people had reached the summit (829 of them since 1998) and 179 people died while summitting.[citation needed] The conditions on the mountain are so difficult that most of the corpses have been left where they fell; some of them are easily visible from the standard climbing routes.
Most expeditions use oxygen masks and tanks [5] above 26,000 feet (8,000 m); this region is known as the death zone. Everest can be climbed without supplementary oxygen, but this requires special fitness training and increases the risk to the climber. Humans do not think clearly with low oxygen, and the combination of severe weather, low temperatures, and steep slopes often require quick, accurate decisions.
Mountain climbers are a significant source of tourist revenue for Nepal; they range from experienced mountaineers to relative novices who count on their paid guides to get them to the top. The Nepalese government also requires a permit from all prospective climbers; this carries a heavy fee.
Death zone
Main article: Death zone
While the normal conditions for any area classified as a death zone apply for Mount Everest (altitudes higher than 8,000 meters), it is significantly more difficult for a climber to survive at the death zone on Mount Everest. Temperatures can dip to very low levels, resulting in the rapid freezing of any body part that is exposed to the air. Because the temperatures are so low, snow is well-frozen in certain areas and death by slipping and falling can also occur. High winds at these altitudes on Everest are also a potential threat to climbers. The atmospheric pressure at the top of Everest is about one-third of the sea level pressure, and this means that there is about one third as much oxygen available to breathe as there is at sea level.[6]
Naming
In Nepal, the mountain is called Sagarmatha (सगरमाथा, Sanskrit for "Goddess of the Sky"); this name was invented in the early 1960s (by Baburam Acharya) when the Nepalese government realized that Mount Everest had no Nepalese name. This was because the mountain was not known and named in ethnic Nepal (the Kathmandu valley and surrounding areas). The Sherpa/Tibetan name Chomolangma was not acceptable, as it would have been against the idea of unification (Nepalization) of the country. However, the ancient name for the mountain is Devgiri (in Sanskrit, it means "holy mountain") or Devadurga (the English pronounced it as deodungha in the 1800s); please refer to the Harrapan archaeology site for more on the history behind the name. In Tibetan it is Chomolungma or Qomolangma (ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ) ("Mother of the Universe"), or in Chinese: 珠穆朗瑪峰 (pinyin: Zhūmùlǎngmǎ Fēng) or 聖母峰 (Shèngmǔ Fēng).
The mountain was given its English name in 1865 by Andrew Waugh, the British surveyor-general of India. With both Nepal and Tibet closed to foreign travel, he wrote:
…I was taught by my respected chief and predecessor, Colonel Sir Geo. Everest to assign to every geographical object its true local or native appellation. … But here is a mountain, most probably the highest in the world, without any local name that we can discover, whose native appellation, if it has any, will not very likely be ascertained before we are allowed to penetrate into Nepal.… In the meantime the privilege as well as the duty devolves on me to assign…a name whereby it may be known among citizens and geographers and become a household word among civilized nations.
Hence Waugh chose to name the mountain after George Everest, first using the spelling Mont Everest, and then Mount Everest. However, the modern pronunciation of Everest – IPA: [ˈɛvərɪst] or [ˈɛvərɨst] (EV-er-est) – is different from Sir George's own pronunciation of his surname, which was [ˈiv;rɪst] (EAVE-rest).
In 2002, the Chinese People's Daily newspaper published an article attacking the continued use of the English name for the mountain in the Western world, insisting that it should be referred to by its Tibetan name. Chinese marked the location Mount Qomolangma on their map more than 280 years ago, named after a Tibetans' Goddess Qomolangma, which gains ground as the peak's original name.[3]
[edit]
Measurement
Aerial view of Mount Everest, behind Lhotse, from the south.
Radhanath Sikdar, an Indian mathematician and surveyor from Bengal, was the first to identify Everest as the world's highest peak in 1852, using trigonometric calculations based on measurements made with theodolites from 240 km (150 miles) away in India. Before it was surveyed and named, it was known as Peak XV to the survey team.
The mountain is approximately 8,848 m (29,028 feet) high, although there is some variation in the measurements. The mountain K2 comes in second at 8,611 m (28,251 feet) high. On May 22, 2005, the People's Republic of China's Everest Expedition Team ascended to the top of the mountain. After several months' complicated measurement and calculation, on October 9, 2005, the PRC's State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping officially announced the height of Everest as 8,844.43 m ± 0.21 m (29,017.16 ± 0.69 ft). They claimed it was the most accurate measurement to date.[1]. But this new height is based on the actual highest point of rock and not on the snow and ice that sits on top of that rock on the summit, so, in keeping with the practice used on Mont Blanc and Khan Tangiri Shyngy, it is not shown here. The Chinese also measured a snow/ice depth of 3.5 m,[4] which implies agreement with a net elevation of 8,848 m. But in reality the snow and ice thickness varies, making a definitive height of the snow cap, and hence the precise height attained by summiteers without sophisticated GPS, impossible to determine.
The first measurement was with theodolites in 1856. Due to lack of access to Nepal at the time, it was measured from a distance. It was found to be exactly 29,000 feet (8,839 m), but declared to be 29,002 feet (8,840 m) high. The arbitrary addition of 2 feet (0.6 m) was to avoid the impression that an exact height of 29,000 feet was nothing more than a rounded estimate.
The elevation of 8,848 m (29,028 ft) was first determined by an Indian survey in 1955, made closer to the mountain, also using theodolites. It was subsequently reaffirmed by a 1975 Chinese measurement [2]. In both cases the snow cap, not the rock head, was measured. In May 1999 an American Everest Expedition, directed by Bradford Washburn, anchored a GPS unit into the highest bedrock. A rock head elevation of 8,850 m (29,035 feet), and a snow/ice elevation 1 m (3 ft) higher, were obtained via this device [3]. Nepal, however, did not officially recognize this survey, and the discrepancy with the above mentioned 2005 Chinese survey is significantly greater than the surveys' claimed accuracy.
It is thought that the plate tectonics of the area are adding to the height and moving the summit north-eastwards. Two accounts, [4], [5] suggest the rates of change are 4 mm per year (upwards) 3-6 mm per year (northeastwards), but this account[6] mentions more lateral movement (27 mm), and even shrinkage has been suggested [7].
Everest is the mountain whose summit attains the greatest distance above sea level. Two other mountains are sometimes claimed as alternative "tallest mountains on Earth". Mauna Kea in Hawaii is tallest when measured from its base; it rises over 10203 m (about 6.3 mi) when measured from its base on the mid-ocean floor, but only attains 4,205 m (13,796 ft) above sea level. The summit of Chimborazo in Ecuador is 2,168 m (7,113 ft) farther from the Earth's centre (6,384.4 km or 3,967.1 mi) than that of Everest (6,382.3 km or 3,965.8 mi), because the Earth bulges at the Equator. However, Chimborazo attains a height of 6,267 m (20,561 ft) above sea level, and by this criterion it is not even the highest peak of the Andes.
The deepest spot in the ocean is deeper than Everest is high: the Challenger Deep, located in the Mariana Trench, is so deep that if Everest were to be placed into it there would be more than 2 km (1.25 mi) of water covering it.
The Mount Everest region, and the Himalayas in general, are thought to be suffering ice-melt due to global warming. The exceptionally heavy Southwest summer monsoon of 2005 is consistent with continued warming and augmented convective uplift on the Tibetan plateau to the north.
[edit]
Climbing routes
This section does not cite its references or sources.You can help Wikipedia by introducing appropriate citations.
Southern and northern climbing routes as seen from the International Space Station.
Mt. Everest has two main climbing routes, the southeast ridge from Nepal and the northeast ridge from China, as well as 13 other less frequently climbed routes. Of the two main routes, the southeast ridge is technically easier and is the more frequently-used route. It was the route used by Hillary and Tenzing in 1953 and the first recognised of fifteen routes to the top by 1996. This was, however, a route decision dictated more by politics than by design as the Chinese border was closed to foreigners in 1949. Reinhold Messner (Italy) summited the mountain solo for the first time, without supplementary oxygen or support, on the more difficult Northwest route via the North Col to the North Face and the Great Couloir, on August 20th 1980. He climbed for three days entirely alone from his base camp at 6500 meters without the use of supplementary oxygen via the North Col/North Face route. This route has been noted as the 8th climbing route to the summit.
Most attempts are made during April and May before the summer monsoon season. A change in the jet stream at this time of year also reduces the average wind speeds high on the mountain. While attempts are sometimes made after the monsoons in September and October, the additional snow deposited by the monsoons makes climbing more difficult.
1996 disaster
During the 1996 climbing season, nineteen people died trying to reach the summit, making it the deadliest single year in Everest history.[citation needed] May 10 of that year was the deadliest day in Everest history, when a storm stranded several climbers near the summit (on the Hillary Step), killing eight. Among those who died were experienced climbers Rob Hall and Scott Fischer, both of whom were leading paid expeditions to the summit. The disaster gained wide publicity and raised questions about the commercialization of Everest.
Journalist Jon Krakauer, on assignment from Outside magazine, was also in Hall's party, and afterwards published the bestseller Into Thin Air which related his experience. Anatoli Boukreev, a guide who felt impugned by Krakauer's book, co-authored a rebuttal book called The Climb. The dispute sparked a large debate within the climbing community. In May 2004, Kent Moore, a physicist, and John L. Semple, a surgeon, both researchers from the University of Toronto, told New Scientist magazine that an analysis of weather conditions on that day suggested that freak weather caused oxygen levels to plunge by around 14%.
During the same season, climber and filmmaker David Breashears and his team filmed the IMAX feature Everest on the mountain (some climbing scenes were later recreated for the film in British Columbia, Canada). The 70 mm IMAX camera was specially modified to be lightweight enough to carry up the mountain, and to function in the extreme cold with the use of particular greases on the mechanical parts, plastic bearings and special batteries. Production was halted as Breashears and his team assisted the survivors of the May 10 disaster, but the team eventually reached the top on May 23 and filmed the first large format footage of the summit. On Breashears' team was Jamling Tenzing Norgay, the son of Tenzing Norgay, following in his father's footsteps for the first time.
Facts
As of the end of the 2003 climbing season, 1,919 people had reached the summit (829 of them since 1998) and 179 people died while summitting.[citation needed] The conditions on the mountain are so difficult that most of the corpses have been left where they fell; some of them are easily visible from the standard climbing routes.
Most expeditions use oxygen masks and tanks [5] above 26,000 feet (8,000 m); this region is known as the death zone. Everest can be climbed without supplementary oxygen, but this requires special fitness training and increases the risk to the climber. Humans do not think clearly with low oxygen, and the combination of severe weather, low temperatures, and steep slopes often require quick, accurate decisions.
Mountain climbers are a significant source of tourist revenue for Nepal; they range from experienced mountaineers to relative novices who count on their paid guides to get them to the top. The Nepalese government also requires a permit from all prospective climbers; this carries a heavy fee.
Death zone
Main article: Death zone
While the normal conditions for any area classified as a death zone apply for Mount Everest (altitudes higher than 8,000 meters), it is significantly more difficult for a climber to survive at the death zone on Mount Everest. Temperatures can dip to very low levels, resulting in the rapid freezing of any body part that is exposed to the air. Because the temperatures are so low, snow is well-frozen in certain areas and death by slipping and falling can also occur. High winds at these altitudes on Everest are also a potential threat to climbers. The atmospheric pressure at the top of Everest is about one-third of the sea level pressure, and this means that there is about one third as much oxygen available to breathe as there is at sea level.[6]
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fate crumbled all around 0 identities
fate crumbled all around 0 identities