What is an antipode?
An antipode is a point that is on the exact opposite side of the earth (or other sphere) from a given location. If you drew a line (vector) from your location to the center of the earth and continued that line until it emerged from the other side of the earth’s surface, that point of intersection on the other side is the antipode. When I was a kid, people occasionally mentioned “digging a hole to China”. While this is currently impossible for many reasons1Earth’s core is about 6000 degrees C, China is not the antipode for North America (where I grew up). If you grew up in Argentina or Chile, then maybe that would make a little more sense.
The antipodes for most of North America and Europe are in the Indian and South Pacific oceans respectively.
Other examples of antipodes that are both on land:
Instructions:
It should be relatively explanatory, but you find your location by dragging the globe on the left side so that your location is in the center crosshair. The other globe (on the right) will show you the antipode to your location.
You can zoom in and out with the +/- buttons or pinch to zoom on mobile. If you zoom in enough, it will look like a normal two-dimensional web map (like google maps).
Tools:
This interactive visualization is made using the awesome webglearth javascript library. I just discovered this recently after making a number of 2D maps.
Footnotes
| ↑1 | Earth’s core is about 6000 degrees C |
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4 Comments »
4 Responses to Antipodes map: What’s on the other side of the Earth?
Love it, great work!
Unfortunately I can find no method of making the globe view on the left move when using my cell phone. (Pixel 4XL Android 11). After a screen refresh, the view will move slightly, less than 5% of the diameter of the globe view… then it will not move again.
Thank you for this… I had a brainstorm during a meditation as to where the center of the earth below was and what was the opposite point through the center. And there the antibode was!
Awesome tool!!!
Thanks!!!