Crozet et l’île de la Possession
Published by Rob Flickenger May 18th, 2007 in Uncategorized
This is why I love teh Internets.
I was wondering about the antipode of Seattle– If you were to draw a line from Seattle straight through the middle of the Earth, where would you pop out again on the other side?
Obviously, somewhere in the Indian ocean, near Antarctica. But what would be the nearest human settlement? By zooming in and panning around on Google Maps, I found these people. Near this itty-bitty port. On this teeeeeeny island, less than ten miles across. This place is so tiny and remote that I half expected to find the plane crash from LOST somewhere on the coast. There is no map data available, but there are some beautiful aerial photos, all the way down to zoom 18.
The island is so small, in fact, that Google doesn’t even give it a name. But there are obviously at least a few people there! The nearest island to the east doesn’t seem to have human traces, but it does have a couple of active volcanoes. Had I found some kind of mad scientist secret headquarters? Or possibly some sort of illicit penguin smuggling operation?
After poking around for literally several seconds on Wikipedia, I had my answer: They’re French!
Yes, I had found Base Alfred-Faure on l’île de la Possession in the Crozet Islands (a territory of France). This meteorological base has been manned continuously since 1963. They even have their own virtual tour (complete with pictures of the buildings from Google’s aerial photo!) If only they had a network connection I could ping them and my little infogeek orgy would be complete. I think they should declare independence and get their own TLD.
Anyway, now that I’m done exploring the French Southern and Antarctic Islands, I’m left to ponder the original problem that got me here: what is the greatest distance that you can separate yourself from another human being while still on Earth? Even though the Crozets are roughly 12,500 away as the crow flies, it’s still only about 8,000 miles away as the mole digs.
There’s an interesting thread here about the problem, but no resolution. What you want is a place that has high altitude, is near the equator, and whose antipode is also well above sea level. My guess is that it would be somewhere in the Andes, probably in Argentina or Chile. The other side of the world from there is China, also in the mountains.
Your thoughts? Post a guess in the comments.
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You really did some panning there. Looks to me the antipode of the Crozets is off the EAST cost of Canada. The antipode if Seattle is closer to Australia.
Oops, nevermind, I had my math wrong, cant just reverse the /- of the long/lat
But “distance from another human being” is a different problem from “linear distance”. From where is it farther to settlement than anywhere else? Should probably restrict to sea level or above. Do ice floes (North Pole) count? If not, Sahara or Siberia?
Good point. Maybe it would be interesting to restrict the problem to finding the two most distant permanent human settlements.
Here’s a handy formula for finding the antipode of any point on Earth, given the geo coords: http://geography.about.com/library/faq/blqzantipode.htm
Briefly, you turn the North latitude into South (or vice-versa). Then subtract the longitude degrees from 180 and turn West to East (or vice-versa).
So the antipode of Base Alfred-Faure (46° 25′ 56″ S, 51° 51′ 30″ E) would be in the Pacific (46° 25′ 56″ N, 129° 51′ 30″ W).
I guess you could build a table of coordinates in all of the cities that overlap Earth on the other side, calculate the antipode for each, and then compare altitudes (factoring in the equatorial bulge, of course…) But is there a better way?
Equatorial circumference: 40,075.02 km
Meridional circumference: 40,007.86 km
Deepest point: 10,924 m - call it 11 km.
Highest point: 8,848 m - call it 9 km.
So the difference between the major and minor ellipticals is 67 or so km, the difference between highest and lowest points is 20 km.
If the mole matters the equatorial bulge means that your furthest points will be near the equator…the opposite of mount everest is vaguely near easter island, but I think your best bet is somewhere between south america along the equator and singapore.
This place claims to be the furthest you can get from people:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_of_the_Seven_Seas
“Edinburgh of the Seven Seas is regarded as the most remote settlement in the world, being over 1,850 miles from the nearest human settlement in Saint Helena.”
Oh, and for interested parties: http://www.antipodemap.com/
This is funky stuff indeed. Safe Software (for which I am an employee) produces products to translate and transform geographic data, and we ran a challenge for our customers to create an antipodal map like the one on wikipedia.
We too found that ’île de la Possession is our antipodes - we are based in Vancouver, Canada, just a short distance from Seattle.
See “workspace of the week” at http://www.fmepedia.com/index.php/Main_Page