Denali Gets A New (Smaller) Height To Go With Its New Name
If you give a mountain a new name, its probably going to ask for a new elevation to go with it. Just days after President Obama ordered the highest peak in the country to be renamed Denali, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) decreed today that the mountain was officially 20,310 feet tall...10 feet shorter than it's previous elevation. So does this mean Denali shrunk? Nope. It just means that we are way better at measuring things now than we were in the 1950's. Back in 1953, when the last survey was taken, researchers didn't have Global Positioning Systems. They relied on maps, math, and traditional surveying techniques. This isn't the first time that the task of re-measuring Denali has been attempted. In 2013, radar measurements of the mountain taken from an aircraft, measured the height at 20,237 feet tall, much shorter than the assumed height of the...