Antipodes

In geography, the antipode (/ˈæntɪˌpoʊd, ænˈtɪpədi/) of any spot on Earth is the point on Earth's surface diametrically opposite to it. A pair of points antipodal (/ænˈtɪpədəl/) to each other are situated such that a straight line connecting the two would pass through Earth's center. Antipodal points are as far away from each other as possible. The North and South Poles are antipodes of each other.
In the Northern Hemisphere, "the Antipodes" may refer to Australia and New Zealand, and Antipodeans to their inhabitants. Geographically, the antipodes of the British Isles are in the Pacific Ocean, south of New Zealand. This gave rise to the name of the Antipodes Islands of New Zealand, which are close to the antipode of London. The antipodes of Australia are in the North Atlantic Ocean, while parts of Spain, Portugal, France and Morocco are antipodal to New Zealand.
Approximately 15% of land territory is antipodal to other land, representing approximately 4.4% of Earth's surface. Another source estimates that about 3% of Earth's surface is antipodal land. The largest antipodal land masses are the Malay Archipelago, antipodal to the Amazon basin and adjoining Andean ranges; east China and Mongolia, and small sections of southeast Russia, antipodal to Argentina and Chile; and Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, antipodal to East Antarctica. There is a general paucity of antipodal land because the Southern Hemisphere has comparatively less land than the Northern Hemisphere and, of that, the antipodes of Australia are in the North Atlantic Ocean, while the antipodes of southern Africa are in the North Pacific Ocean.
Since the antipode of any place on the Earth is the place that is diametrically opposite of it, a line drawn from one to the other will pass through the centre of Earth and form a true diameter. For example, the antipodes of New Zealand's lower North Island lie in Spain. Most of the Earth's land surfaces have ocean at their antipodes; this is a natural consequence of most of the Earth's surface being covered in water.
The antipode of any place on Earth is distant from it by 180° of longitude and as many degrees to the north of the Equator as the original is to the south (or vice versa); in other words, the latitudes are numerically equal, but one is north and the other south. The maps shown here are based on this relationship; they show a Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection of the Earth, in yellow, overlaid on which is another map, in blue, shifted horizontally by 180° of longitude and inverted about the Equator with respect to latitude.
Solar noon (i.e. the time at which the sun is highest) at one place is solar midnight at the other, the winter solstice at one place is the summer solstice at the other, and the spring equinox at one place is the fall equinox at the other. Sunrise and sunset do not quite oppose each other at antipodes due to refraction of sunlight.
If the geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude) of a point on the Earth's surface are (φ, θ), then the coordinates of the antipodal point are (−φ, θ ± 180°). This relation holds true whether the Earth is approximated as a perfect sphere or as a reference ellipsoid.
In terms of the usual way these geographic coordinates are given, this transformation can be expressed symbolically as
that is, for the latitude (the north–south coordinate) the magnitude of the angle remains the same but N is changed to S and vice versa, and for the longitude (the East/West coordinate) the angle is replaced by its supplementary angle while E is exchanged for W. For example, the antipode of the point in China at 37° N 119° E (a few hundred kilometres from Beijing) is the point in Argentina at 37° S 61° W (a few hundred kilometres from Buenos Aires).
The word antipodes comes from the Greek: ἀντίποδες (antípodes), plural of ἀντίπους (antipous), "with feet opposite (ours)", from ἀντί (antí, “opposite”) + πούς (poús, “foot”). The Greek word is attested in Plato's dialogue Timaeus, already referring to a spherical Earth, explaining the relativity of the terms "above" and "below":
The term is taken up by Aristotle (De caelo 308a.20), Strabo (Geographica 1.1.13), Plutarch (On the Malice of Herodotus 37) and Diogenes Laërtius (Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers book 3), and was adopted into Latin as antipodes. The Latin word changed its sense from the original "under the feet, opposite side" to "those with the feet opposite", i.e. a bahuvrihi referring to hypothetical people living on the opposite side of the Earth. Medieval illustrations imagine them in some way "inverted", with their feet growing out of their heads, pointing upward.
In this sense, Antipodes first entered English in 1398 in a translation of the 13th century De Proprietatibus Rerum by Bartholomeus Anglicus, translated by John of Trevisa:
(In Modern English: Yonder in Ethiopia are the Antipodes, men that have their feet against our feet.)
The modern English singular antipode arose in the 16th or 17th century as a back-formation from antipodes; antipous or the Latinate antipus would have been closer to the original singular. Most dictionaries suggest a pronunciation of /ˈæntɪˌpoʊd/ for this form.
Pomponius Mela, the first Roman geographer, asserted that the earth had two habitable zones, a North and South one, but that it would be impossible to get into contact with each other because of the unbearable heat at the Equator (De orbis situ 1.4).
Third-century AD Christian philosopher Augustine of Hippo was skeptical of the notion. Augustine asserted that "it is too absurd to say that some men might have set sail from this side and, traversing the immense expanse of ocean, have propagated there a race of human beings descended from that one first man."
In the Early Middle Ages, Isidore of Seville's widely read encyclopedia presented the term "antipodes" or, as he said "antipodas" as referring to antichthones (people who lived on the opposite side of the Earth), as well as to a geographical place:
In using the form antipodas rather than the more usual Latin antipodes Isidore simply transcribed the original Greek αντίποδας, the singular case of the name: the plural case is αντίποδες (antipodes), used in converting the name into Latin. These people came to play a role in medieval discussions about the shape of the Earth.
In 748, in reply to a letter from Boniface, Pope Zachary declared the belief "that beneath the earth there was another world and other men, another sun and moon" to be heretical. In his letter, Boniface had apparently maintained that Vergilius of Salzburg held such a belief.
The antipodes being an attribute of a spherical Earth, some ancient authors used their perceived absurdity as an argument for a flat Earth. However, knowledge of the spherical Earth was widespread during the Middle Ages, only occasionally disputed—the medieval dispute surrounding the antipodes mainly concerned the question whether people could live on the opposite side of the earth: since the torrid clime was considered impassable, it would have been impossible to evangelize them. This posed the problem that Christ told the apostles to evangelize all mankind; with regard to the unreachable antipodes, this would have been impossible. Christ would either have appeared a second time, in the antipodes, or left the damned irredeemable. Such an argument was forwarded by the Spanish theologian Alonso Tostado as late as the 15th century and "St. Augustine doubts" was a response to Columbus's proposal to sail westwards to the Indies.
The author of the Norwegian book Konungs Skuggsjá, from around 1250, discusses the existence of antipodes. He notes that (if they exist) they will see the sun in the north in the middle of the day and that they will have seasons opposite those of the Northern Hemisphere.
Herodotus recorded that Pharaoh Necho II of the 26th Dynasty (610–595 BC) commissioned an expedition of Phoenicians which in three years sailed from the Red Sea around Africa back to the mouth of the Nile, and that "as they sailed on a westerly course round the southern end of Libya (Africa), they had the sun on their right"— to northward of them, proving that they had been in the Southern Hemisphere. The earliest surviving account by a European who had visited the Southern Hemisphere is that of Marco Polo (who, on his way home in 1292, sailed south of the Malay Peninsula). He noted that it was impossible to see the star Polaris from there.
The idea of dry land in the southern climes, the Terra Australis, was introduced by Ptolemy and appears on European maps as an imaginary continent from the 15th century. Antipodes was what Giovanni Contarini, on his world map of 1506 called the land later named America by Martin Waldseemüller. When the land discovered by Pedro Alvarez Cabral in April 1500, Brazil, was formally named Santa Cruz by the assembled Portuguese court on 20 May 1503, it was also referred to in the official record of the proceedings as the “Land of the Antipodes”: terra Antipodum.
The land reached by Columbus in 1492 was identified as that of the Antipodes by the diplomatist Peter Martyr who, in a letter he wrote from Barcelona dated 14 May 1493, said: "A few days since, a certain Christopher Columbus, a Ligurian, returned from the Western Antipodes". Perhaps influenced by this, Fernão Vaz Dourado in his Atlas of 1571 inscribed over the map of Mexico and adjacent parts of America, Tera Antipodum regis Castelle inventa a Xforo Columbo Januensi (Land of the Antipodes, discovered for the King of Castile by Christopher Columbus of Genoa).
In spite of having been discovered relatively late by European explorers, Australia was inhabited very early in human history; the ancestors of the Indigenous Australians reached it at least 50,000 years ago.
To make the longest distance trip around the planet, a traveler would have to pass through a set of antipodal points. All meridians can be crossed in one hemisphere—indeed, this is possible by walking in a circle around one of the poles—but such trips are shorter than a minimum circumnavigation. On the other hand, the greatest straight line distance that could in theory be covered is a trip exactly on the Equator, a distance of 40,075 kilometres (24,901 mi). The Earth's equatorial bulge makes this slightly longer than a north–south trip around the world along a set of meridian lines, which is a distance of 40,008 kilometres (24,860 mi). Any other closed great circle route starting on the equator and traveling at an angle between 0° (an equatorial route) and 90° (a polar route) would be between 40,075 and 40,008 kilometres (24,901 and 24,860 mi). In all of these cases, after half of the world has been traversed, every subsequent point will be antipodal to one already visited.
There are currently no commercial aircraft capable of traveling non-stop between antipodes with a standard full commercial passenger load.
The current world record-holder Airbus A350-900ULR is capable of flying 18,000 kilometres (9,700 nmi; 11,000 mi), or roughly 90% of an average antipodal distance. Singapore Airlines currently holds the world record for the longest scheduled passenger flight, and utilizes this model in their non-stop Singapore to New York-JFK route SQ23/24.
In 2019, Qantas completed separate non-stop flights taking 19–20 hours to encompass the 16,013 km (9950 miles) from New York and 17,016 km (10,573 miles) from London, both to Sydney, Australia with a limit of 49 passengers on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and who underwent medical tests on the flight. The London-Sydney direct routes are said to be the world's most profitable ultra-long haul flights annually. Their plans for the same pair of experiments were quickly put on hold due to global travel restrictions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
In March 2021, a Comlux 787-8, registered P4-787, flew a non-scheduled (chartered), non-stop flight from Seoul Incheon to Buenos Aires, which are nearly antipodal points. This set a new record for the longest commercial non-stop flight with paying passengers, covering 19,483 kilometres (10,520 nmi; 12,106 mi) in 20 hours 19 minutes.
The business jet variant of the Airbus A350, the ACJ350, which entered into service in 2020, has a range of 20,550 km (12,770 miles), enabling it to operate between any two available antipodes. As of September 2021, there are three ACJ350s now in service globally. The owner of the first ACJ350, the German Government, has already taken it on a close to antipodal flight with a flight from Cologne, Germany to Canberra, Australia in November 2020. The upcoming Boeing business jet variant, the BBJ 777-8, will also have an antipodal reach with its published range of 21,570 km (13,403 miles). Both aforementioned variants from Airbus and Boeing are the first aircraft designed to handle flights exceeding the Earth's average antipodal distance of 20,000 km (12,420 miles).
Among flights with fuel stop and crew-change stop but still same flight number, Air New Zealand previously had the world's longest active plane route—the Auckland–Los Angeles–London marathon, at 19,240 km (11,960 mi) over Los Angeles (directly 18,360 km or 11,410 mi)—until the airline cancelled this route late in 2019. The current record holder for such a flight is co-owned by Qantas and British Airways in their operating of the Kangaroo Route's Sydney—Singapore—London flights covering a great circle distance of 17,176 km (10,673 mi; 9,274 nmi).
A hypothetically almost perfect antipodal flight would be Tangier Ibn Battouta Airport, Morocco (IATA: TNG), to Whangarei Aerodrome, New Zealand (IATA: WRE), whose designated locators are 10,800 nautical miles (12,428 mi; 20,002 km) apart, almost the maximum possible distance. However, with only a length of 3,599 ft (1,097 m), Whangarei's runway is too short to accommodate any current (as of 2015) commercial jet airliner, especially one with the required range. Traveling between them would currently need at least two plane changes.
Other near-antipodal major city pairs include:
The ambiguous airport designation HLA could refer to either Lanseria International Airport (IATA: HLA, ICAO: FALA, 25°56′S 027°55′E) in South Africa or Huslia Airport (IATA: HSL, ICAO: PAHL, FAA LID: HLA, 65°42′N 156°21′W) in Alaska. While these airports are not quite antipodal (only 15,581 km (9,682 mi; 8,413 nmi) apart), they are notable considering that they share the same designation. Automated systems that select the wrong airport from a database could lead to navigation errors or large outliers in data analysis.
Around 71% of the Earth's surface is covered by oceans, and seven-eighths of the Earth's land (when excluding Antarctica) is confined to the land hemisphere, so the majority of locations on land do not have land-based antipodes. About 15% of the earth's land has an antipode on land. Rough calculation shows that, of the 29% of the earth that is covered by land, if 15% of that has antipodes on land, then about 4% (0.15 × 29% = 4.35%) of the earth's surface has antipodes that are both land surfaces. Spilhaus estimates this at about 3%.
The two largest human-inhabited antipodal areas are located in East Asia (mainly eastern China) and South America (mainly Argentina and Chile). The two largest monolithic antipodal land areas are most of Chile and Argentina along with eastern and central China and Mongolia, and most of Greenland along with a part of Antarctica. The Australian mainland is the largest landmass with its antipodes entirely in ocean, although some locations of mainland Australia and Tasmania are close to being antipodes of islands (Bermuda, Azores, Puerto Rico) in the North Atlantic Ocean. The largest landmass with antipodes entirely on land is the island of Borneo, whose antipodes are in the Amazon rainforest.
Exact or almost exact antipodes:
To within 100 km (62 mi), with at least one major city (population of at least 1 million):
Taiwan (formerly called Formosa) is partly antipodal to the province of Formosa in Argentina.
Capital cities within 200 km (120 mi) of each other's antipodes:
Other major cities or capitals close to being antipodes:
Gibraltar is approximately antipodal to Te Arai - about 85 km (53 mi) north of Auckland, New Zealand. This illustrates the old yet correct saying that the sun never sets on the British Empire; the sun still does not set on the Commonwealth of Nations.
The northern part of New Caledonia, an overseas territory of France, is antipodal to some thinly populated desert in Mauritania, a part of the former French West Africa. Portions of Suriname, a former Dutch colony, are antipodal to Sulawesi, an Indonesian island spelled Celebes when it was part of the Netherlands East Indies. Luzon, the largest island of the Philippines, is antipodal to eastern Bolivia.
Santa Vitória do Palmar, the most southerly town of more than 10,000 people in Brazil, is antipodal to Jeju Island, the southernmost territory of South Korea.
Hawaii is antipodal to parts of Botswana. The Big Island of Hawaii is antipodal to the Okavango Delta in Botswana, with the island's largest city, Hilo, antipodal to Nxai Pan National Park.
Desolate Kerguelen Island is antipodal to an area of thinly inhabited plains on the border between Cypress County, Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada and the US state of Montana. The only permanent settlement on Kerguelen Island, the research station Port-aux-Français, is antipodal to fields 10 km (6.2 mi) northeast of Senate, Saskatchewan. Other Canadian towns with antipodes on Kerguelen Island include: Consul, Nashlyn and Govenlock in the vicinity of Senate, and in Alberta Eagle Butte, Elkwater and Manyberries as well as the Red Coat Trail between Orion, Alberta and Etzikom. The northern part of Liberty County, Montana, especially the communities Goldstone, Fox Crossing and Sage Creek Colony, also have antipodes on Kerguelen Island.
St. Paul Island and Amsterdam Island are antipodal to thinly populated parts of the eastern part of the US state of Colorado. They are situated ca. 10.2 km (6.3 mi) south-south-east of Firstview and 30.5 km (19.0 mi) south-south-west of Granada, Colorado, respectively. Together with the northern part of Liberty County, Montana, they are the only three areas of the Contiguous United States with antipodes on land.
The north-eastern coast of Alaska from Utqiaġvik (former Barrow) over Prudhoe Bay to the Canadian border, and the coasts of the Canadian territories of Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, are antipodal to Antarctica.
The Heard Island and McDonald Islands, an uninhabited Australian territory, is antipodal to an area in central Saskatchewan, including the towns of Leask and Shellbrook.
Tigres Island, the largest uninhabited island of Angola, is approximately antipodal to Johnston atoll, which is the third largest uninhabited island of the United States.
Easter Island is antipodal to an area close to Desert National Park, 35 km (22 mi) from Jaisalmer, India. The only town on Easter Island, Hanga Roa, is antipodal to the village of Serawa 46 km (29 mi) northeast of Jaisalmer. Serawa is the only village in India to be antipodal to a human settlement. Its neighbouring villages Mokla and the northern part of Bhadasar also have antipodes on Easter Island. The small, rocky, uninhabited island of Sala y Gómez, 391 km (243 mi) east-northeast of Easter Island, is antipodal to an area in the city of Ajmer, India, just east of Ana Sagar Lake. All the rest of India has its antipodes in the sea.
Kiritimati, the largest island of Kiribati and the largest coral atoll in the world, is antipodal to Salonga National Park, which is the largest national park of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the largest tropical rainforest reserve in Africa.
Serra da Estrela Natural Park, the largest natural park of Portugal, is antipodal to Kahurangi National Park, the second largest national park of New Zealand.
South Georgia Island is antipodal to the northernmost part of Sakhalin Island.
Lake Baikal is partially antipodal to the Straits of Magellan.
The Russian Antarctic research base Bellingshausen Station is antipodal to a land location in Russian Siberia.
Rottnest Island, off the coast of Western Australia, is approximately antipodal to Bermuda.
Cocos (Keeling) Islands, an Australian external territory in the Indian Ocean, is almost antipodal to Nicaragua's Corn Islands.
Flores Island, the westernmost island of the Azores, is nearly antipodal to Flinders Island between Tasmania and the Australian mainland.
Point Nemo, the point in the South Pacific Ocean most distant from any other land, is precisely opposite a desolate piece of desert in western Kazakhstan.
By definition, the North Pole and the South Pole are antipodes.
Null Island, 0°N 0°E﻿ / ﻿0°N 0°E﻿ / 0; 0, at the intersection of the prime meridian and the equator, has its antipodes at 0°N 180°E﻿ / ﻿0°N 180°E﻿ / 0; 180, at the intersection of the antimeridian and the equator. This point lies northeast of Nikunau in the Gilbert Islands and southwest of Baker Island, a United States territory.
As can be seen on the purple/blue map, the Pacific Ocean is so large that it stretches halfway around the world; parts of the Pacific off the coast of Peru are antipodal to parts of the same ocean off the coast of Southeast Asia. For example, the island of Ko Chang—which is the second or third largest island in Thailand—is nearly antipodal to San Lorenzo Island, which is the largest island of Peru.
The antipodes of the Antipodes Islands, considered by early European explorers to be antipodal to the United Kingdom, are the town of Barfleur on France's Cotentin Peninsula.
The remote Pacific atoll of Tematagi is antipodal to the Islamic holy city of Mecca, meaning the direction of Muslim prayer would vary widely from that of surrounding islands.
Angkor Wat is roughly antipodal to Machu Picchu.
The following countries are opposite more than one other country. (Antarctica is considered separately from any territorial claims.)
Countries matching up with just one other country are Morocco, Spain, Chad, Libya, Cameroon (with the Cook Islands of New Zealand); Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia (with French Polynesia); Senegal (Vanuatu); the UAE (Pitcairn); Ghana, Ivory Coast (Tuvalu); Burkina Faso (Rotuma in Fiji); Guinea (Solomon Islands); India (Easter Island); Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand (all with Peru); Singapore (Ecuador); Brunei, Palau, Micronesia (all with Brazil); Venezuela and Suriname (Indonesia).
Of these, the larger countries which are entirely antipodal to land are the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, Fiji, Vanuatu, Brunei, and Samoa. Chile was as well prior to its expansion into the Atacama with the War of the Pacific.
Antipodal Map of the United States
In a number of cases on extraterrestrial bodies in the Solar System, unusual geologic features (e.g., jumbled terrain or unique volcanic constructs) are located antipodal to major impact basins. It has been hypothesized that this results from focusing of some of the seismic waves (p-waves and surface waves) produced by an impact at its antipode.