India To Send Surveyors To Find Out If Everest Shrunk From Nepal Earthquake

OffTheLip writes: Recent scrutiny into the officially recorded height of the world's tallest mountain will lead to a re-measurement. A 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Nepal in 2015 is being eyed as the reason. India's surveyor general Swarna Subba Rao said, "We will remeasure it. Two years have passed since the major Nepal earthquake and there's doubt in the scientific community that it did in fact shrink." A team will depart once winter passes to take measurements to determine the current height of Everest. "The exercise will require a month of observation and roughly another fortnight for the data to be officially declared," reports Phys.Org. "The earthquake, Nepal's deadliest disaster in more than 80 years, is also believed to have shifted the earth beneath the capital Kathmandu several meters to the south."

A New Number One!

[Princeofcups]

K2! K2! K2! We want measurements now!

Re:

[dwywit]

I like to move it, move it!

Re:

[DickBreath]

They may want measurements now, right now! But I hope they first took time to consult with Trump to find out which conclusion the surveyors are supposed to announce.

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[unixisc]

India should avoid measuring it, otherwise the new crown will belong to both Pakistan and China, on whose border K2 lies

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[laie_techie]

K2! K2! K2! We want measurements now!

There are 2 number ones: one for elevation, one for height. Everest (or K2) is indeed the highest elevation on earth. Mauna Kea ("White Mountain") on the island of Hawaii, however, is the tallest mountain on earth (the base is miles below sea level).

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[RockDoctor]

Chomolungma ("Mt Everest") would need to lose over 200m of height to be lower than K2.

Fortnights!

[Notabadguy]

I enjoy it when "Fortnights" make it into subject lines and article summaries. I also enjoy "Forsooth" and "Begorrah."

The occasional "Limey!" But I haven't seen one of those in a fortnight.

Re:

[LynnwoodRooster]

Well now, it was but 3 score and 4 years ago when mighty Everest was conquered, seems fitting that a fortnight be used to attest the mount's stature of 4,838 fathoms!

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[DickBreath]

Q. How many inches per second is an atto parsec per micro fortnight?
A. Surprisingly close, very close in fact, to one.

Atto parsecs per micro fortnight is my favorite unit of velocity.

Google for: "attoparsec per microfortnight to inches per second"
Get answer: 1.00433

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[gnick]

Atto parsecs per micro fortnight is my favorite unit of velocity.

Wouldn't that just be "picoparsecs per fortnight"?

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[DickBreath]

picoparsecs per fortnight is to be avoided for being more concise.

The commonly used furlongs per fortnight (yes, really, google it) is to be avoided due to familiarity.

George says...

[Anonymous Coward]

It didn't shrink.... it's just cold up there.

ACHTUNG!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU is *NOT* UNIX!!!

Satellites?

[hawguy]

It will take a month of observation then 2 weeks to process the data? I thought this sort of thing was done by satellites these days.

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[religionofpeas]

I would have thought there would be a permanent GPS station on the summit.

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[Anonymous Coward]

There is one at the base camp. [leica-geosystems.com]

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[RockDoctor]

Base camp is built on moraine. Even the yaks don't consider that stuff to be in any one place permanently.

No, seriously, tent platforms etc constantly have to be rebuilt as the ground shifts, because the ground is loose rock and mud with moving ice along one edge.

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[dwywit]

They have to do the needful.

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[yaznaz]

The GPS measurement have to be be evaluated against the sea level (that varies across the globe) and corrected for earth's non uniform shape. Here are some additional details on how this correction is done: https://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PUBS_... [noaa.gov] The high precision GPS recording have to be taken for a long time and then combined with standard survey methods for building baseline. And that means triangulating and correcting for atmosphere by calculating refraction coefficients by measuring pressure, humidity and

Where is all the information?

[cyn1c77]

This article has three links. Two of them are to a Wikipedia page and one is to a BBC article from 2015.

How much has the height of Everest changed? Where is the link from 2017 mentioning this information?

Hello? Editors?

Re:Where is all the information?

[hawguy]

This article has three links. Two of them are to a Wikipedia page and one is to a BBC article from 2015.

How much has the height of Everest changed? Where is the link from 2017 mentioning this information?

Hello? Editors?

I think this is the missing phys.org link:

https://phys.org/news/2017-01-everest-true-height-spurs-fresh.html [phys.org]

Re:Where is all the information?

[cdrudge]

I think the first link was suppose to point to something like this article [thehindu.com].

As to how much the height of Everest has changed, that's what the entire point of the survey is to find out.

"Shrank"

[mrbester]

Or "has shrunk". Pick one. You're not rapping with Mary J Blige.

So what if it *did* shrink?

[Provocateur]

Should we change all our maps to rename it the mountain formerly known as Everest?

Re: So what if it *did* shrink?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it'll be renamed Everer.

shrunk?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Try "shrank" instead. Or "has shrunk".

Semi-literate commenters is one thing, when the editors are semi-literate, its getting out of hand.

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[MikeKD]

<sigh>
Are. Semi-literate commenters are one thing
Oh, and "it's", as in "it is getting out of hand."

Wouldn't it be growing rather than shrinking?

[fredrated]

After all, it was created as the Indian plate crashes into the Eurasian plate, which causes the earthquakes.

So, if it shrank, will they...

[johannesg]

...make Everest great again?

It would be easy enough to add a few meters to the top. And make Nepal pay for that, of course.

In other news...

[JustNiz]

...residents of Wycheproof are celebrating that their mountain is one step closer to being the world's largest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]