Why is Mount Everest so tall? - Michele Koppes 

Why is the land so low? - Mount Everest

Being a Nepalese neither I'm proud of nor I care whether it lies in Nepal China or between. All I care is the commercial climbing route is in the Nepalese side and grateful that it serves our tourism well. All I want is we should preserve its surrounding environment well. It's our natural heritage.

Hikers??? More like Mountaineers, this is no hike this is a gawd damn journey.

Mt. Everest is in Nepal and also called Sagarmatha by the Locals

To those of who are confused about the word 'Quomolangma', it comes from the Chinese/Tibetan language meaning "mother of the World". In Nepali, we call Mt. Everest as 'Sagarmatha' meaning "Forehead of the sky".

I'll stick to climbing the stairs

Good nutrition, i guess

The mountain is littered with garbage, human waste and several hundred frozen corpses.

The top two things in my wishlist: 1. Climb to the top of Everest. 2. Don't die on my descent.

So mountains are basically the geological equivalent of wrinkles

It started off as a mole hill, and then my mother got involved.

I misread the thumbnail's title as lol xD

My fingernails grow faster than 2-4cm/year...

Im glad I went to school i understand everything there talking about (weathering, tectonic plates, gravity)

The animation is beautiful

MT.Everest is in Nepal where I used to live (I miss Nepal)

If you want to climb mount everest it will cost you around 75-85 thousand dollars(including gears,accommodation and lodging expenses) .You need a expedition permit from Government of Nepal (Ministry of culture,tourism and civil aviation ) .You have to take a flight to Kathmandu ,Nepal and from there to Lukla ,Nepal which is considered one of the most dangerous airport in the world.From there its a 7-10 day walk to base camp.

Yes, it's over 8500m, but the surrounding valleys are all around +4000m, so it's just a 4500m peak over high terrain, it's totally not like I imagined it since I was a kid, Google Earth was the first to give me a more realist view of Everest. And because there are so many tall mountains around it, it looks less impressive than, for example, Mount Kilimanjaro or Denali

Pen-Pen Chen has such a great voice.

@TED-Ed : i wish you said "Sagarmatha"(mt.everest in nepali language);as being the fact that most part of it is in Nepal side. Qomolangma is in tibetan language and we nepali call it Sagarmatha not qomolangma. thanks.

"Mount Everest is not the tallest mountain" Years of academy training waisted

it is tall becuase it wants to be tall

Great video, I'd like to see a follow-up on why the largest mountain in the solar system, Olympus Mons on Mars, is so tall. Granted we don't fully know that answer yet, but I think we know enough for a short summary of possible explanations and how Mars' reduced gravity affected its geology would be extremely interesting.

memories.... i just climbed the very top of mount Everest last spring with my wife, and had a good time... it was really awesome and i hope everyone could be there before they die...

TED-Ed, the answers to your 3 am questions.

Here use this to finish your assignment: Every spring, hundreds of adventurer seekers dream of climbing Qomolangma, also known as Mount Everest. At base camp, they hunker down for months waiting for the chance to scale the mountain’s lofty, lethal peak. But why do people risk life and limb to climb Everest? Is it the challenge? The view? The chance to touch the sky? For many, the draw is Everest’s status as the highest mountain on Earth. There is an important distinction to make here. Mauna Kea is actually the tallest from base to summit, but at 8850 meters above sea level, Everest has the highest altitude on the planet. To understand how this towering formation was born, we have to peer deep into our planet’s crust, where continental plates collide. The earth surface is like an armadillo’s armor. Pieces of crust constantly move over, under, or around each other. For such huge continental plates, the motion is relatively quick. They move two to four centimeters per year, about as fast as fingernails grow. When two plates collide, one pushes into or underneath the other, buckling at the margins and causing what is known as uplift to accommodate the extra crust. That is how Everest came about. 50 million years ago, the Earth’s Indian plate drifted north and bumped into the bigger Eurasian plate and the crust crumpled creating huge uplift. Mount Everest lies at the heart of this action on the edge of the Indian-Eurasian collision zone. But mountains are shaped by forces other than uplift. As the land is pushed up, airmasses are forced to rise as well. Rising air cools, causing any water vapor within it to condense and form rain or snow. As that falls it wears down the landscape dissolving rocks or breaking them down in a process known as weathering. Water moving down-hill carries the weathered material. It erodes the landscape, carving deep valleys and jagged peaks. This balance between uplift and erosion, gives a mountain its shape. But compare the celestial peaks of the Himalayas to the comforting hills of Appalachia, clearly all mountains are not alike. That is because time comes into the equation as well too. When continental plates first collide, uplift happens fast. The peaks grow tall with steep slopes. Over time however, gravity and water wear them down. Eventually erosion takes uplift, wearing down peaks more than they are pushed up. A third factor shapes mountains: climate. In subzero temperatures, some snowfall does not completely melt away, instead slowly compacting until it becomes ice. That forms the snowline, which occurs at different heights around the planet depending on climate. At the freezing poles, the snowline is at sea level. Near the equator, you have to climb 5 kilometers before it gets cold enough for ice to form. Gathered ice starts flowing under its own immense weight forming a slow-moving frozen river known as a glacier, which grinds the rock below. The steeper the mountains, the faster ice flows, and the quicker it carves the underlying rock. Glaciers can erode landscapes swifter than rain and rivers. Where glaciers cling to mountain peaks, they sand them down so fast, they lop the tops off like giant snowy buzzsaws. So then, how did the icy Mount Everest come to be so tall? The cataclysmic continental crash from which it arose, made it huge to begin with. Secondly the mountain lies near the tropics, so the snowline is high, and the glaciers, relatively small, barely big enough to widdle it down. The mountain exits in the perfect storm of conditions that maintain its impressive stature. But that won’t always be the case. We live in a changing world where the continental plates, Earth’s climate, and the planet’s erosive power might one day conspire to cut down Mount Everest down to size. For now, at least, it remains legendary in the minds of hikers, adventurers, and dreamers alike.

Actually each and every video of TED-Ed is so interesting and astonishing that I can't even let a single epi to miss 💕

There are types of earthquakes you know, there is convergent boundary (when plates crash to each other), divergent boundary (when plates move against each other), and transform fault (when plates move side to side). Mount Everest was formed by a convergent boundary earthquake

Nepali here.. Feeling proud! #everest

Welcome to Nepal🇳🇵 Country of Mount Everest

i am from nepal.. . the place where everest lies..... everest lies in nepal👌👌👌

Actually Mount Everest may be the tallest based on sea level (Altitude), but it isn't the highest mountain based on distance from the Center of the Earth!

I'm from Nepal and I have never climbed Everest. By the way the real name of Mt. Everest is "Sagarmatha" (Nepali name) which means "forehead in the sky".

Another reason the Himalayas are so very tall is the speed of the plate collision, which was faster than other plate interactions. Most plate collisions are slow bumps...the India plate crashed.

Main thing is mount Everest is not in india. It is in Nepal that is between India and China. It is also called sagarmatha

I used to become obsessed with this kind of stuff in high school while I lived through adolescence!

Isn't that where the grinch lives?

Good way to keep comment section alive and impart knowledge by not mentioning 'Sagarmāthā' at all but focussing on 'Qomolangma' as if it was the original name.

Hikers : Im gonna climb Mt.Everest! Frostbite : Im gonna end this mans whole carreer

Well there existed a sea named Tethys sea in the Mesozoic time. 150 Million years ago the Gondwanaland land broke off and part of it (Indian plate) moved towards the Eurasian plate. The Tethyan sea in between the Eurasian & Indian plate got squeezed (starting at around 60 million years ago) and formed the central region of the Himalayas. Therefore, it wasn't the collision of two continental plates, rather squeezing of oceanic plate by two oppositely moving continental plate which created the mighty Himalayas. And that's why we can found Carbonate rocks and marine fossils in the central part of Himalayas. Nepalese people call it " Sagarmatha". Sagar means sea & mata means Mother. So, may be the name has something to do with the Tethys Sea. Well we call it Mount Everest here in India.

Fun fact: If you placed Mt.Everst at the deepest part of the ocean, it would still be submerged under water by 3 miles :D

You said Chomolongma(Tibetian) but not Sagarmatha(Nepali)?? Why??

Because it is standing on its tippy-toes. ;-)

Mountains keep continents together ie if you remove mount everest or k2 you will find a contienent crashing together .

since when finger nails only grow 2-4 cm per year

My friend went there and had 3 children... Tierre is now a single mother and she's still popping out some more

Dear, @TED-Ed , you only mentioned its name in tibetan language and forgot to mention the name of mt. everest in nepali language , its called "Sagarmatha" meaning forehead in the sky. thanks.

I bought a new quadcopter today and the shopkeeper for testing it was flying it for so long that the battery life ended and it is night so I have to charge it tomorrow.

man It's Hurt When They Say Mt.Everest But Don't Mentioned Nepal 😭

Ok! I have to watch this for school, and its super helpful for the assignment. Thank you! 😊

It's Sagarmatha , biatches.

Something they forgot to put in was Sir Edmond Hillary was the first to climb to the top of mount Everest.

Hi TED-Ed, Chomolongma is the Tibetan name for the mighty Everest. Considering if you're scaling it from which side matters. The Nepali name for Everest is Sagarmatha! Would have been nice if you mentioned it, but this is just a pointer! Love the informative video.

Hi AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HELP OW! DAMMIT I FELL DOWN HERE!! hold on lemme get my rope. |

It would be great if there was one name of Everest "Sagarmatha" real Nepali name.....

I'm slightly disappointed the Tethys Sea wasn't mentioned. Mount Everest rose from it when the plates clashes. Picturing a mountain rising out of a sea is cool and terrifying at the same time.

Mount Everest is not just the tallest mountain on earth, it’s the tallest place on Earth.

I like the new voice.. So much fun to listen now!

I don't know about all of this but for me there's always gonna be another mountain, I always gonna wanna make it move. Sometimes it'll be an uphill battle, sometimes I'm gonna have to lose. Ain't about how fast I'm going, ain't about what's waiting on the other side, it's the climb.

Its known on the other side as the Himaalayas. Since the Indian plate bumped into Eurasian plate and created the mountain range, its better to call it Himalayas.

Mauna Kea: You can't beat me Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest), I am the tallest mountain from base to summit. Sagarmatha: It's over Mauna Kea, I have the high ground.

Here's a fact for you Mt. Everest is 60 million years old and humans first migrated to the subcontinent almost a million years ago.

These kind of video are so enjoyable and man! The quality is amazing!

I already knew that. But why aren't there any volcanoes in the Himalaya? Normally when plates collide one subducts under the other resulting in magma being formed that rises and forms volcanoes. Did subjugation not happen along these two plates?

I am just shocked that Nepal wasn't mentioned once in the video. That is just so sad!

Why Mount Everest So Tall? Religious People : "Because God made it so"

Q: "Why is Mt Everest so tall?" A: Well you see... mountains are like that. Tall. I think that's why we call them mountains.

*Hi, I am from Ecuador, there is a huge and beautiful mount in Ecuador named Chimborazo, I have heard that this mountain is the tallest place on earth, I mean this is the closest place to the sky, not because it is the tallest mountain but because the shape of earth, (which is wider in the center) what makes it THE TALLEST MOUNTAIN ON EARTH?, is that true? Is the top of the Chimborazo the closest place of the earth to the sky? Greetings from Ecuador, South America!*

why there's no single word spelled Nepal?

its been a looong fdaaay without you my frieennnddd and ill tell you all about it hwnen i see you agaiiin when i see you agaaiiinn WOAOAAHHHHHH WOOAOAHHAHH OOOUUOUUOUUOUOUOUUUOUWW

Namaste from the top of the world Nepal 🇳🇵🇳🇵

K2, the second highest peak, with a height of 8,611 m compared with Everest’s 8,848 m, is also nearby in Pakistan.

Mt everst is called Sagarmatha. It is found in Nepal. 8 Out of 10 tallest peak are in Nepal.

Finally a sensible scientific argument about plate tectonics.

her voice made me sleepy

1:37 im not Asian

It makes me feel insecure about my height

It is called Sagarmatha, Chumolongma, zhumolongma and Mt Everest

I imagine this doesn't need to be said, so I'll type it. That was really interesting.

Thanks

some people take the risk because their life is so low risk. they have too much time and money on their hands

Why wasn't Nepal prime minister mentioned? And who gave you permission to make this video?

Keep the videos coming :)

Did you forget that Mount Everest is situated in Nepal and it is called sagarmatha

I heard that yetis are in Mount Everest

At the start why ask why people try to climb it? Couldn't that part be cut out so the actual question can be answered

Qomolangma!! Thank you for including the tibetan word :) Tibetans don't really get recognition that Mt.Everest is also in Tibet :)

Thanks for the video...

3:50 awnser

01:20 01:38 02:17 04:07

I saw a documentary, and it said that Mount Everest is still growing...

One more point to add - every year Mt. everest is growing taller and taller because the plate below is still moving .

On small addition- before the day of Mt. Everest's erosion starts, it will continue to grow. The forces at play in making them this tall aren't done yet 🙂 So I guess, the longer you wait to climb it, the higher it's summit will rise out of your reach 😅

well, it's very easy, the earth first has two parts the water and the land and it had land which was known as Gondwana land it included present-day- Australia India America, South Africa, and Antarctica then due to conventional current in the earth crust the Indo-Australian plate got separated and diverged towards the north and got submerged into a larger Eurasian plate due to the collision the sedimentary rocks which were submerged in the geosyncline known as Tethys were folded and formed the mountain system of western Asia and Himalaya. and then there was a plateau at the south of India and it had a big depression in between which eventually got filled by the sediments of the rivers flowing by Himalayas and plateau. This is how the Himayala and Northen plains were formed :) its very easy

Commonly Mount Everest is called Sagarmatha in Nepali language. Also known as Chomolungma or Zhumulangma in Tibetan or in other native language I guess. But, the name Sagarmatha is well renowned all over Nepal. 🙏🏔️

Tibetan people call it Chomolungma Nepali people call it Sagarmatha and Rest of the world Everest. But majority of Everest lies in Nepal and majority of mountaineers prefer Nepal to climb it instead of Tibet side you should have called it Sagarmatha.

My fingernails grow 2-4cm/week !

That moment your name is Kea and you realise you share a name with a mountain

What is Nepal?

Good thing we dont have that Olympus Mons into our Earth or else mountaineers go berserk.