Calculating the length of a river is an extremely complex task, even for professional hydrographic cartographers. The length of a river is measured by identifying an estuary, the precise point at which a river begins to become another river, sea, or ocean tributary, and the measurement scale used.
Officially, the Nile is 6,650 kilometers long and the Amazon is 6,400 kilometers long. This should mean that the Nile is the longest river on Earth. However, a few years ago, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics published a survey confirming that the Amazon River is the longest river in the world.
Ultimately, scientists concluded that its total length was 6,800 kilometers, compared to the Nile's total length of 6,650 kilometers.
Study of the lengths of the Nile and Amazon rivers
The group of scientists traveled to Peru, one of the countries that crosses the Amazon together with Brazil and Colombia. They concluded that the river's source was somewhere in southern Peru. And not in the north as we thought until now. It took scientists 14 days to determine an altitude of about 5,000 meters above sea level. Until now, the source of the river has been fixed at Torre Apache Quebrada near Nevado Mismi.
After analyzing the results of the expedition, it remains to be seen whether the international community will finally grant the Amazon the title of the longest river on Earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment