Summary - What is bigger - the Himalayan Mountain range or the Pacific Ocean? If you were to take a person who didn’t know anything about either and set them in a boat in the middle of the Pacific, and then take them to the top of Mt Everest, and ask them which is bigger, they would very likely answer that the Himalayas are bigger. If you were to ask which was more spectacular, they would most certainly choose the mountains, with towering rock cliffs, jagged peaks, glacier-filled valleys, over the flat, featureless ocean. But the truth is, the entire Himalaya mountain range is just over 1 million square kilometers, but the Pacific ocean is over 160 million square kilometers! Not only that, but we know that hidden under the surface of the featureless ocean is actually quite spectacular. In fact, Mt Everest may claim the highest point on the planet, but in fact, it is not the tallest mountain in the world. That title goes to an ocean in the Pacific - Mount Mauna Kea, in Hawaii. It is actually 33,000 feet tall, some 4,000 feet taller than Mt Everest, but about half of the mountain is below the surface of the ocean. This illustrates the truth that we can sometimes smaller things are much more spectacular when compared with things that are vastly greater because they are just too big for us to wrap our minds around. The Pacific ocean is so big, that even for those of us who have flown across it, it can be hard to fathom how vast it really is, not to mention that much of its wonder lies well hidden beneath the surface. Unless we take some effort to go below the surface and explore its depths, we will really have no idea how marvelous the ocean really is. But, Mt Everest is spectacular, not so much because it is so big, but actually, because it is small enough for us to see all at once. Because it is small enough to see all at one view, it has the power to dwarf us and to give a sense of awe and wonder, in ways that the much larger Pacific ocean may not at first glance.
