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In geography, the 'antipodes' (from Greek ''anti-'' "opposed" and ''pous'' "foot"; pronounced [ænˈtɪpəˌdiːz]) of any place on Earth is its antipodal point; that is, the region on the Earth's surface which is diametrically opposite to it. Two points which are ''antipodal'' [ænˈtɪpədəl] to one another are connected by a straight line through the centre of the Earth.
In the United Kingdom and Ireland, "the Antipodes" is often used to refer to Australia and New Zealand[1] (and "Antipodeans" for their inhabitants), despite the fact that neither Australia nor New Zealand actually overlap the antipodal points of the British Isles. However, New Zealand (or more precisely the North Island and the northern tip of the South island) is antipodal to Spain and Northern Portugal, as shown on the map. They also sometimes broaden the term to refer to South Africa and Oceania as well, so in their view it basically any former British territory 'south of the equator' though, as shown before, this is geographically incorrect.

Contents

Geography

Mathematical description

Etymology

Historical significance

List of antipodes

On Earth

Other bodies

See also

References

External links

Geography

The antipodes of any place on the Earth is the place which is diametrically opposite it — so situated that a line drawn from the one to the other passes through the centre of the Earth and forms a true diameter. For example, the antipodes of New Zealand's north island lies in Spain. Most of the earth's land surfaces have ocean at its antipodes, this being a consequence of most land being in the northern hemisphere.
An antipodal point is sometimes called an ''antipode'', a back-formation from the Greek plural ''antipodes'', whose singular in Greek is ''antipous''.
The antipodes of any place on Earth must be distant from it by 180° of longitude, and must be as many degrees to the north of the equator as the original is to the south; in other words, the latitudes are numerically equal, but one is north and the other south. The map shown above is based on this relationship; it shows a mercator projection map of the Earth, in red, overlaid on which is another map, in yellow, shifted horizontally by 180° of longitude and inverted about the equator with respect to latitude. This map allows the antipodes of any point on the Earth to be easily located.
Noon at the one place is midnight at the other (although daylight saving and irregularly-shaped time zones affect this in most places); seasonally, the longest day at one point corresponds to the shortest day at the other, and midwinter at one point is contemporaneous with midsummer at the other.
In the calculation of days and nights, midnight on the one side may be regarded as corresponding to the noon either of the previous or of the following day. If a voyager sails eastward, and thus anticipates the sun, his dating will be twelve hours in advance, while the reckoning of another who has been sailing westward will be as much in arrears. There will thus be a difference of twenty-four hours between the two when they meet. To avoid the confusion of dates which would thus arise, it is necessary to determine a meridian at which dates should be brought into agreement, known as the International Date Line.

Mathematical description

If the coordinates (longitude and latitude) of a point on the Earth’s surface are (''θ'', ''φ''), then the coordinates of the antipodal point can be written as (''θ'' ± 180°,−''φ''). This relation holds true whether the Earth is approximated as a perfect sphere or as a reference ellipsoid.

Etymology

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, Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius, 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:
(''Translation: Yonder in Ethiopia are the Antipodes, men that have their feet against our feet.'')

Historical significance

The term plays a certain role in the discussion about the shape of the Earth. The antipodes being an attribute of a spherical Earth, some authors used their perceived absurdity as an argument for a flat Earth. However, knowledge of the spherical Earth being widespread even during the Dark Ages, only occasionally disputed on theological grounds, the medieval dispute surrounding the antipodes mainly concerned the question whether they were inhabitable: since the torrid clime was considered impassable, it would have been impossible to evangelize them, posing a dilemma between two equally unacceptable possibilities that either Christ had appeared a second time in the antipodes, or that the inhabitants of the antipodes were irredeemably damned. Such an argument was forwarded by the Spanish theologian Tostatus as late as the 15th century.
Saint Augustine (354–430) argued against people inhabiting the antipodes:
Since these people would have to be descended from Adam, they would have had to travel to the other side of the Earth at some point; Augustine continues:
The author of the Norwegian book Konungs Skuggsjá, from around 1250, discusses the existence of antipodes. He notes that they (if they exist) will see the Sun in the north in the middle of the day - and that they will have opposite seasons of the people living in the Northern Hemisphere.
The first European who actually visited the Southern Hemisphere was Marco Polo (on his way home, sailing south of the Malay Peninsula in 1292). He noted that it was impossible to see the star Polaris from there.
The idea of dry land, inhabited or not, in the Southern climes, the ''Terra Australis'' was introduced by Ptolemy, and appears on European maps as an imaginary continent from the 15th century. 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 having reached it at least 50,000 years ago.

List of antipodes

On Earth

★ Hamilton (Bermuda) - Perth (Australia)

★ Madrid (Spain) - Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu (New Zealand)

★ Mogadouro (Portugal) - Nelson (New Zealand)

★ Foz (Spain) - Christchurch (New Zealand)

★ Gibraltar (British Territory) - Auckland (New Zealand)

★ Buenos Aires (Argentina) - Shanghai (China)

★ Formosa (Argentina) - Taiwan, also formerly known as Formosa

★ Krâvanh (Cambodia) - Lima (Peru)

★ Mecca (Saudi Arabia) - Moruroa (French Polynesia)

★ Santiago (Chile) - Yuncheng (China)

★ Jixian (China) - Linares (Chile)

★ Chiclayo (Peru) - Satun (Thailand)

★ Haikou (China) - Arica (Chile)

★ Ulan-Ude (Buryat Republic, Russia) - Puerto Natales (Chile)

★ Strait of Magellan (Chile) - Chita through Lake Baikal (Eastern Siberia, Russia)

★ Hawaiian Islands - Botswana (with the exception of a thin Alaskan coastal area along the Arctic Ocean, Hawai‘i is the only US state with a terrestrial antipode).

Other bodies

★ Caloris Basin - "Weird Terrain" (Mercury)

★ Mare Orientale - Mare Marginis (The Moon)

★ Mare Imbrium - Mare Ingenii (The Moon)

★ Argyre Planitia - Utopia Planitia (Mars)

See also

★ Antipodal point

★ Clime

★ Spherical Earth

★ Antipodes Islands

★ Antichthones

References

External links

★ Earth Sandwich Map dual-image map to locate the antipodes of any location on Earth.

★ Antipodes map dual-image map to locate the antipodes of any location on Earth.

★ Latitude and Longitude converter and Antipodal calculator Includes an antipodes location point calculator and tells the antipodal location distance. Also provides a latitude and longitude converter which can convert latitude and longitude from degree, decimal form to degree, minutes, seconds form and vice versa.

★ Antipodes map Interactive maps to locate antipodal map locations