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Amazon Longer Than Nile River, Scientists Say

John Roach
for National Geographic News

June 18, 2007

The Amazon River, not the Nile, is the longest in the world, a team of Brazilian scientists claims.

The scientists claim to have traced the river's source to a snow-capped mountain in southern Peru, adding a new twist in the swirling debate over the longest river label.

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• Into the Amazon in National Geographic Magazine (August 2003)
• Nile Explorers Battled Adversity, Tragedy, to Find River Source (April 19, 2006)
• Explorers Pinpoint Source of the Amazon (December 21, 2000)

(See a map of the region.)
The Amazon is considered the world's largest river by volume, but scientists have believed it is slightly shorter than Africa's Nile.
The Brazilian scientists' 14-day expedition extended the Amazon's length by about 176 miles (284 kilometers), making it 65 miles (105 kilometers) longer than the Nile.
According to the team's results, which have not been published, the Amazon is 4,225 miles (6,800 kilometers) long. The Nile stretches 4,160 miles (6,695 kilometers).
(See related: "Amazon River Once Flowed the Other Way, Study Says" [October 25, 2006].)
"Today, we can consider the Amazon the longest river in the world," study author Guido Gelli, director of science at the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, told London's Telegraph newspaper.
Long Rivalry
The Amazon and the Nile have been at the center of a centuries-old rivalry over the "world's longest" title.
In the 20th century, consensus gave the title to the Nile.
Determining the length of a river is tricky because scientists have to pinpoint both where the river begins and ends, Andrew Johnston, a geographer at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., told National Geographic News.

Home > Earth > Earth Records > Greatest River World's Greatest River: The Amazon The Amazon is the greatest river in the world by so many measures; the volume of water it carries to the sea (approximately 20% of all the freshwater discharge into the oceans), the area of land that drains into it, and its length and width. It is one of the longest rivers in the world and, depending upon who you talk to, is anywhere between 6,259km/3,903mi and 6,712km/4,195mi long. For the last century the length of the Amazon and the Nile Rivers have been in a tight battle for title of world's longest river. The exact length of the two rivers varies over time and reputable sources disagree as to their actual length. The Nile River in Africa is reported to be anywhere from at 5,499km/3,437mi to 6,690km/4,180mi long. But there is no question as to which of the two great rivers carries the greater volume of water - the Amazon River. At its widest point the Amazon River can be 11km/6.8 mi wide during the dry season. The area covered by the Amazon River and its tributaries more than triples over the course of a year. In an average dry season 110,000 square km of land are water-covered, while in the wet season the flooded area of the Amazon Basin rises to 350,000 square km. When the flood plains and the Amazon River Basin flood during the rainy season the Amazon River can be up to 40km/24.8 mi wide. Where the Amazon opens at its estuary the river is over 325km/202 mi wide! Because the Amazon drains the entire Northern half of the South American continent (approx. 40% landmass), including all the torrential tropical rains that deluge the rainforests, it carries an enormous amount of water. The mouth of the Amazon River, where it meets the sea, is so wide and deep that ocean-going ships have navigated its waters and traveled as far inland as two-thirds of the way up the entire length of the river. Meet Dr. Zeb Hogan here on Extreme Science -> The Amazon - Home of Extremes The Amazon River is not only the greatest in the world, it is home to many other "extremes" of the natural world. Have you ever seen a catfish? They're usually found in warm, slow moving waters of lakes and streams, and some people keep them as pets in aquariums. Catfish are pretty creepy looking fish with big flat heads and "whiskers" on either side of their heads (hence the name, catfish). Most catfish that we're familiar with here in the U.S. are anywhere from eight inches long to about five feet, weighing in at up to 60 pounds. But the catfish that live in the world's greatest river have all the room in the world to grow as big as nature will allow - they have been captured weighing over 200 pounds! One of the largest freshwater fish in the world is found living in the waters of the Amazon River. Arapaima, also known locally as Pirarucu, Arapaima gigas are the some of the largest, exclusively fresh water fish in the world. They have been found to reach a length of 15 ft/4m and can weigh up to 440lbs/200kg. (Read about the biggest freshwater fish in the world.) Amazon River Facts How did the Amazon get to be so big? The first reason has to do with its location - right at the equator. Around the "belt line" of the earth lies a warm, tropical zone where over 400 in/1016cm of rain fall every year. That averages out to more than an inch (3cm) of rain, everyday! A lot of water falls onto the land surrounding the river, what is called the "Amazon River drainage basin". A good way to understand what a drainage basin is to think of the whole northern half of the continent of South America as a shallow dish, or saucer. Whenever rain falls and lands anywhere in the river basin it all runs into the lowest place in the pan, which happens to be the Amazon River. The sheer volume of rain in the Amazon jungle, as well as the slope of the surrounding land, combine to create the enormous river known as the Amazon. Cool Factoid: Did you know that bull sharks have been found in the Amazon River? Scientists have captured live bull sharks as far as 2,300 miles inland from the sea thriving in freshwater in the foothills of the Peruvian Andes!

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sreenivasa ramanujam

This is a remarkable story of perhaps the greatest mathematician who has ever lived. What makes this story compelling is that Srinivasa Ramanujan, who was born in India in 1887 and lived to only 33, is a person largely unknown outside the world of mathematics. But his short life's work will amaze you! Without a doubt, Ramanujan was a genius, ranking with Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and a few other great mathematicians of the past two centuries. His story is unique in the history of scientific inquiry, yet you probably have never heard of him or what he accomplished. Here is his story.  Srinivasa Ramanujan was born in 1887 near Madras, in India. India was largely a poor country, and Ramanujan's family could not afford to educate him. He had no library of books, or other resource material, and was unaware of the centuries of mathematical ideas and discoveries which had preceeded his birth. The only exposure he had to modern Western mathematics was one small, obscure book of mathematics. Nevertheless, as a small child he became fascinated with numbers and mathematical ideas, and by the age of ten, it was evident that he had great gifts. On his own, he rediscovered Euler's identity relating trigonometric functions and exponentials. Using the obscure theorems in his one small mathematics book as a starting point, he developed his ownformulas. He was able to win a scholarship to high school, but found that he was already well beyond what was being taught, and dropped out. Eventually he landed a low-paying clerk's job which didn't demand too much of his time, and began to devote himself to exploring mathematical ideas. Without any awareness of what had already been discovered by European mathematicians, he re-derived many of the previous century's discoveries completely on his own. What hundreds of other mathematicians had contributed to the field during the previous hundred years, he discovered on his own, all by himself . (Tragically, much of his short life was spent rediscovering mathematics that was already known). Ramanujan kept a record of his ideas in a set of notebooks, and some of these ideas he sent in a letter to a respected mathematician in England, Godfrey Hardy. Hardy at first was tempted to throw away the letter, because the ideas it contained were seemingly just a collection of already well-known mathematical theorems. However, when he eventually took a closer look at Ramanujan's letter, he realized that these ideas had been developed by the young mathematician completely on his own, without any mathematical training. More importantly, he discovered that Ramanujan had included 120 theorems that were completely unknown to Western mathematicians, and Hardy had never seen anything like them. Some of them he couldn't even understand. Hardy now recognized the genius of Ramanujan, and arranged for him to come to England to study at prestigious Cambridge University. There the young mathematician was finally able to work with others and share their ideas. Ramanujan was awarded a B.A. Degree in 1916, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, in February, 1918, and was also elected to a Cambridge Trinity College Fellowship, in October, 1918. In these three or four short years, between 1914 and 1918, he produced an astounding number of new theorems, filling more notebooks with his work. His approach to mathematical ideas was different than other mathematicians; he discovered new theorems in a completely incomprehensible manner. Ramanujan often said that his ideas came to him in his dreams, which he then wrote down. After an intense three years of amazing work, Ramanujan sadly became ill of tuberculosis, and died, at the young age of 33. But he continued working right up until the end, and eventually left behind three volumes of his notes (and a fourth, which was only discovered in 1976), containing more than 4000 formulas, some of which had never been seen before, and which would represent a lifetime of work for any other mathematician. Frustratingly, Ramanujan did not describe his work in his notes, nor did he provide proofs for his theorems. As a result, his writings remain a fascinating but largely undeveloped source of new ideas, which mathematicians are still trying to decipher. Many of his theorems and ideas have become valuable new tools in various branches of both mathematics and physics; his description of modular functions is one of the strangest ideas ever to be proposed in mathematics, yet has been found to be useful in the study of symmetry in particle physics only recently. Unquestionably, Srinivasa Ramanujan was a most amazing mathematician, and truly a genius. The great tragedy is that he was able to devote so little of his short life to the study of new mathematics. What might he have accomplished had he lived?

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