Watching the Simpsons Movie over the weekend, I was reminded of something I frequently heard as a child: “if you dig a hole straight down through the Earth, you’ll end up in China.” It’s not true, of course… you’d end up in China only if your tunnel totally missed the center of the Earth.
I asked some Chinese friends about this. Were they ever told that if they dug a hole straight down through the Earth they’d end up somewhere? To my disappointment, they said no.
Still, there has been plenty of interest in antipodes (the exact opposite point, running straight through the earth’s center, of any point on the globe). Here’s a wikipedia map showing what regions overlap:
So you can see that China mostly just overlaps with Argentina, and most countries don’t overlap with any land at all. According to another website, China gets these exciting antipodes match-ups:
- Beijing - Bahia Blanca, Argentina
- Shanghai - Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Wuhan - Cordoba, Argentina
- Xi’an - Santiago, Chile
- Taipei - Asuncion, Paraguay
If you want to explore your own antipodes, there’s a cool “dual Google Map” Antipodes Map that let’s you do just that graphically, as well as a (more boring) online antipodal calculator for figuring out actual longitude and latitude.
Key takeaway: China is a cool place to visit, but you better do your homework before you go to the trouble of digging a hole all the way through the center of the Earth.
Why does it flip upside down?
August 13th, 2007 at 1:15 amBecause it’s mirrored, mate.
August 13th, 2007 at 3:10 amWhy dig through the middle of the earth when you are already the middle of the earth?
August 13th, 2007 at 6:34 amCool links. Thanks!
I had heard from friends and blog commenters that there were jokes about 挖到美国去 - maybe it’s just not as common as ‘digging to China?’
August 13th, 2007 at 8:26 amSo the Movie “The China Syndrome” needs to be renamed to “The somewhere-in-the-middle-of-the-Pacific-ocean syndrome”?
August 13th, 2007 at 2:15 pmI read here and there on the net that if you dig from a town called Formosa in some South American country (I forgot which, but judging from this map it must be Paraguay), you end up in… Taiwan, la ilha formosa.
August 13th, 2007 at 5:50 pmOK. But what if you dig a hole straight through the planet, maintaining the same latitude?
August 14th, 2007 at 8:48 amcool im from buenos aires.. so i traveled 1/2 earth already :D
Lu: Formosa its in Argentina.. but its really near Paraguay its not a city.. its the name of .. mm a province (kinda like estate)
August 14th, 2007 at 10:24 pmI get that the definition of an “antipode” makes things mirrored and such….but if you did just dig straight down, there’s no reason to flip things right?
August 15th, 2007 at 12:18 pmtunneling through the earth I expect that the pressure at the center of the earth is so great you could vaporise waste (That could be a fun).
As a child was always told Australia, Down Under lol
August 19th, 2007 at 5:05 am