In "It's a Wonderful Life" George offers to lasso the moon for Mary. Now, if he had been serious about it, he could have summitted the peak of a certain mountain and stood as close to the moon as possible without actually leaving the earth.
Ok, so, the earth isn’t a perfect sphere-nothing unexpected there. My favorite science guy,Robert Krulwich, compares its actual shape to a slightly deflated beach ball that someone’s sat on and left an indentation-an “oblate spheroid” as mathematicians would call it. There's a bluge making some places on earth closer to things in outer space than others.
It’s common knowledge that at 29,035 above sea level, Mount Everest is the highest point on earth-IF “highest” is defined starting at sea level. When thinking of the highest point as the point farthest from the center of the earth, Mount Everest isn’t the winner. Neither is K2, or Mount McKinley.
Grab your gear and a Spanish dictionary kids, we’re going to Ecuador. Yep, Mount Chimborazo in the Andes Mountains is the farthest point from the center of the earth, and thus-the closest point to the moon and outer space, which is where George should have gone. According to Joseph Senne, an engineer/surveyor, Chimorazo sits 1.5 miles higher on the bulge than Everest.
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