GlobeofBlogs"The Height of the Depth--The M&M"
Mount Everest, also called Chomolungma or Qomolangma,Sagarmatha (Nepali) is the highest mountain on Earth, as measured by the height of its summit above sea level, which is
8,848 metres or 29,029 feet. The mountain, which is part of the Himalaya range in High Asia, is located on the border between Sagarmatha Zone, Nepal and Tibet, China. The Great Trigonometric Survey of India established the first published height of Everest in 1856 at 29,002 ft (8,840 m), although at the time Everest was known as Peak XV. The mountain was given its official English name in 1865 by the Royal Geographical Society upon recommendation of Andrew Waugh, the British Survey General of India at the time. Waugh was unable to propose an established local name due to Nepal and Tibet being closed to foreigners at the time although Chomolungma had been in common use by Tibetans for centuries.
NamingIn 1865, the mountain was officially given its English by the Royal Geographical Society after being proposed by Andrew Waugh, the British surveyor-general of India. 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: is in fact different from Sir George's own pronunciation of his surname, which was /ˈiːvrɪst/
Measurement
In 1856, Andrew Waugh announced Everest (then known as Peak XV) as 29,002 feet (8,840 m) high, after several years of calculations based on observations made by the Great Trigonometric Survey.
More recently, the mountain has been found to be 8,848 metres (29,029 ft) high, although there is some variation in the measurements. On May 22, 2005, the People's Republic of China's Everest Expedition Team ascended to the top of the mountain. After several months' 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. This height is based on the actual highest point of rock and not on the snow and ice covering it. The Chinese team also measured a snow/ice depth of 3.5 m,which is in agreement with a net elevation of 8,848 m. The snow and ice thickness varies over time, making a definitive height of the snow cap impossible to determine.
The elevation of 8,848 m (29,029 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. 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 ft), and a snow/ice elevation 1 m (3 ft) higher, were obtained via this device.Although it has not been officially recognized by Nepal, this figure is widely quoted. Geoid uncertainty casts doubt upon the accuracy claimed by both the 1999 and 2005 surveys.
Early ExpeditionsIn 1885, Clinton Thomas Dent, president of the Alpine Club, suggests that climbing Mount Everest is possible in his book Above the Snow Line.
On June 8, 1924, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, both of the United Kingdom, made an attempt on the summit via the north col/north ridge route from which they never returned. On May 1, 1999, the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition found Mallory's body in the predicted search area near the old Chinese camp. Controversy has raged in the mountaineering community as to whether or not one or both of them reached the summit 29 years before the confirmed ascent (and of course, safe descent) of Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. The general consensus among climbers has been that they did not.
Mallory had gone on a speaking tour of the United States the year before in 1923; it was then that he exasperatedly gave the famous reply, "Because it is there," to a New York journalist in response to hearing the question, "Why climb Everest?" for seemingly the thousandth time.
In 1933, Lady Houston, a British millionaire ex-showgirl, funded the Houston Everest Flight of 1933, which saw a formation of aircraft led by the Marquess of Clydesdale fly over the summit in an effort to deploy the British Union Flag at the top.
reasserted control over Tibet. However, in 1950, Early expeditions – such as Bruce's in the 1920s and Hugh Ruttledge's two unsuccessful attempts in 1933 and 1936 – tried to make an ascent of the mountain from Tibet, via the north face. Access was closed from the north to western expeditions in 1950, after the ChineseBill Tilman and a small party which included Charles Houston, Oscar Houston and Betsy Cowles undertook an exploratory expedition to Everest through Nepal along the route which has now become the standard approach to Everest from the south.First successful ascent by Tenzing and Hillary
In 1953, a ninth British expedition, led by John Hunt, returned to Nepal. Hunt selected two climbing pairs to attempt to reach the summit. The first pair (Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans) came within 100 m (300 feet) of the summit on 26 May, but turned back after becoming 
exhausted. As planned, their work in route finding and breaking trail and their caches of extra oxygen were of great aid to the following pair. Two days later, the expedition made its second and final assault on the summit with its second climbing pair, the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay from Nepal. They reached the summit at 11:30 a.m. local time on May 29, 1953 via the South Col Route. At the time, both acknowledged it as a team effort by the whole expedition, but Tenzing revealed a few years later that Hillary had put his foot on the summit first. They paused at the summit to take photographs and buried a few sweets and a small cross in the snow before descending.
News of the expedition's success reached London on the morning of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation. Returning to Kathmandu a few days later, Hunt (a Briton) and Hillary (a subject of Elizabeth, through her role as head of state of New Zealand) discovered that they had been promptly knighted in the Order of the British Empire, a KBE, for the ascent. Tenzing (a subject of the King of Nepal) was granted the George Medal by the UK. Hunt was ultimately made a life peer in Britain, while Hillary became a founding member of the Order of New Zealand.[more...]
The Mariana Trench (or Mariana's Trench) is the deepest part of the world's oceans, and the deepest location on the surface of the Earth's crust. It has a maximum depth of about 11 km (6.8 mi), and is located in the western North Pacific Ocean, to the east and south of the Mariana Islands, near Guam.The trench forms the boundary between two tectonic plates, where the Pacific Plate is subducted beneath the Philippine Plate. The bottom of the trench is farther below sea level than Mount Everest is above it (8,848m/29,028ft). At the bottom, the water column above exerts a pressure of 108.6 MPa, over one thousand times the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level.
Measurement
The trench was first surveyed in 1951 by the Royal Navy vessel Challenger, which gave its name to the deepest part of the trench, the Challenger Deep. Using echo sounding, the Challenger II measured a depth of 5,960 fathoms (10,900 metres, 35,760 ft)
In 1957, the Soviet vessel Vityaz reported a depth of 11,034 meters (36,200 ft), dubbed the
Mariana Hollow.(Although this claim was made by the Soviets in 1957, the finding has not been repeated by subsequent mapping expeditions using more accurate and modern equipment.)
In 1962, the surface ship M.V. Spencer F. Baird recorded a greatest depth of 10,915 meters (35,810 ft), using precision depth gauges.
Desents
The United States Navy bathyscaphe Trieste reached the bottom at 1:06 p.m. on January 23, 1960, with U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard on board.Iron shot was used for ballast, with gasoline for buoyancy. The onboard systems indicated a depth of 11,521 meters (37,799 ft), but this was later revised to 10,916 meters (35,813 ft). At the bottom, Walsh and Piccard were surprised to discover soles or flounder about 30 cm (1 ft) long, as well as shrimp According to Piccard, "The bottom appeared light and clear, a waste of firm diatomaceous ooze".
The most accurate measurement on record was taken by a Japanese probe, Kaikō (かいこう), which descended unmanned to the bottom of the trench on March 24, 1995 and recorded a depth of 10,911 meters (35,798 ft).
source: wikipedia
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