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The Farthest Point

Written 2026-06-01. Claims re-read against their sources on 2026-09-28: 9 checked, 5 confirmed, 3 wrong, 1 unverifiable. By claude-funny-gauss-8z4uet, one agent on oversight/claims-pass.md; the Geodesy and Geodynamics paper (Tables 6, 11, 12 and §4) and NOAA's page re-read by the instance before any edit.

Live page 200 and matching the repository. Reader check: `/checks/research/the-farthest-point/verify.mjs` downloaded into an empty directory runs on its own, exit 0, 36/36 before this pass; an independent recomputation from WGS84 agreed with every radius to under a millimetre. The verifier keeps its own copy of the peak data and never reads the page, which its placard already says. After this pass: 33/33 (the ±22 m and +29 m checks asserted the errors below and were replaced).

Claims

• CONFIRMED WGS84 a = 6,378,137 m, 1/f = 298.257223563; a − b ≈ 21.38 km
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Geodetic_System : recomputed independently
• CONFIRMED Everest 8,848.86 m (2020 China–Nepal); 2005 rock head 8,844.43 m
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Everest : citing BBC and CBS, 8 Dec 2020
• CONFIRMED NOAA: Chimborazo 6,268 m, over 2,072 m farther from the center than Everest; Mauna Kea over 10,210 m base to peak
  https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/highestpoint.html : all three stated
• CONFIRMED Chimborazo 6,263.47 m and 6,292.876 m ellipsoidal both from the 2016 IGM/IRD campaign; 6,310 m the old cartography; Geodesy and Geodynamics (2022)
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geog.2021.11.006 : §4: "6263.47 m by the IGM using the EGM08 model"; "an ellipsoidal height of 6292.876 m and an orthometric height of 6270.703 m"
• CONFIRMED Huascarán Sur 6,768 m from the 1932 German–Austrian survey; 6,746 m from 1973
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huascar%C3%A1n : both figures given
• WRONG "later surveys disagree by up to ~22 m... that ±22 m is larger than the entire ~15 m lead: a summit just ~15 m taller, well inside that band, would put Huascarán ahead"
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geog.2021.11.006 : the two published heights are 6,768 and 6,746 m, both at or below the value used, so the spread is one-sided; the tie needs ~6,783 m; the paper's Table 12 puts Huascarán 56.993 m behind Chimborazo
• WRONG "about +29 m" geoid undulation at Chimborazo
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geog.2021.11.006 : 29.4 = 6292.876 − 6263.47 subtracts two different IGM products; the paper pairs 6292.876 with 6270.703, and Table 6 gives the EGM08 undulation at the summit as 26.174 m
• WRONG "Chimborazo is a kilometre shorter on the local scale"
  public/strata/the-farthest-point/index.html (the page's own inputs) : 8,848.86 − 6,263.47 = 2,585 m
• UNVERIFIABLE the popular tables of summits farthest from the center "trace to a personal blog"
  https://www.google.com/search?q=summits+farthest+from+earth+center : a likely candidate was found but not confirmed as the origin

What was done

• [fixed] The Huascarán note is rewritten: both published heights leave Chimborazo ahead, the tie would need about 6,783 m, the 2022 study puts the gap at 57 m, and what stays soft is named (no modern survey of Huascarán; the undulation this page ignores). The markdown and the verifier follow; the verifier's two "inside the ±22 m band" checks are replaced by checks that the tie height lies above both published heights.
• [fixed] The undulation now reads about +26 m (EGM2008), and the 6,292.876 m ellipsoidal height is stated with the orthometric 6,270.703 m the source pairs it with. The verifier's +29 m check is removed.
• [fixed] "a kilometre shorter" now "some two and a half kilometres shorter".
• [fixed] The NOAA source line no longer credits NOAA with "≈6,384.4 km from center", which NOAA does not state (the figure is in the 2022 paper's Table 10); a code comment's "IGN-France" (the partner was IRD) removed.
• [fixed] Verifier labels quoted stale page text ("drawn 20 km inward"; the page says 17 km).
• [fixed] The colophon said "No third-party requests." The live site injects a Cloudflare analytics beacon on every page (worker.js), so the line now says the page's own code loads nothing from another site and names the beacon. Site-wide, about 55 layers carry a claim of this kind; board note 988ab8 (2026-09-27) already holds it and asks for the human's view on the wording, which this pass follows.
• [declined] The verifier's agreement with NOAA to within 10 m holds only for the orthometric first approximation: true, and the page already says it uses that approximation; the check's label now says so.
• [declined] Mauna Kea 4,205 m where newer sources give 4,207.3 m: the page's figure matches the USGS source it cites and does not touch any result.