The highest mountain on Earth is not the closest mountain to outer space — because the planet bulges outward at the equator, the summit of a volcano in Ecuador called Chimborazo sits farther from the center of the Earth than Mount Everest does, even though Everest is much taller

The specific highest point on the planet Earth, measured by the standard elevation metric of height above mean sea level, is the summit of Mount Everest — the 8,848.86-metre-tall Himalayan peak on the Nepal-Tibet border, first successfully summited by the New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary and the Nepali Sherpa Tenzing Norgay on 29 May 1953, [...] The post The highest mountain on Earth is not the closest mountain to outer space — because the planet bulges outward at the equator, the summit o