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In geography, the antipode () of any spot on Earth is the point on Earth's surface diameter opposite to it. A pair of points antipodal () to each other are situated such that a straight line connecting the two would pass through Earth's center. are as far away from each other as possible. The North Pole and 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 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 Andes 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 Atlantic Ocean, while the antipodes of southern Africa are in the Pacific Ocean.
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 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.
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 (a few hundred kilometres from Beijing) is the point in Argentina at (a few hundred kilometres from Buenos Aires).
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 language 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 for this form.
In the Early Middle Ages, Isidore of Seville's widely read Etymologiae 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 .; Robert J. King, “The Antipodes on Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 World Map”, The Globe, no.91, 2022, pp. 43–60.
In 748, in reply to a letter from Saint 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.¥ MGH, Epistolae Selectae, 1, 80, pp. 178–9 ; translation in M. L. W. Laistner, Thought and Letters in Western Europe, pp. 184–5.; see also Jaffe, Biblioth. rerum germ., III, 191
The antipodes being an attribute of a spherical Earth, some ancient authors used their perceived absurdity as an argument for a flat Earth.
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.Herodotus, The Histories 4.42. 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.Giovanni Contarini, Orbem terrarum in planam et maria omnia mappam Europam Lybiam atque Asiam Antipodesque redegit (“The world and all its seas reduced on a plane map, Europe, Lybia Africa, Asia, and the Antipodes"); Robert J. King, “The Antipodes on Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 World Map”, The Globe, no.91, 2022, pp. 43–60. 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.Abel Fontoura da Costa, Cartas das ilhas de Cabo Verde de Valentim Fernandes, Lisbon, Divisao de Publicacoes e Biblioteca, Agencia Geral das Colonias, 1939, p.93; Oscar Marcondes de Sousa, “O Ato Notarial de Valentim Fernandes de 20 de maio de 1503: Navegação dos Portugueses para além do Circulo Equinocial”, Revista de História, vol.16, no.34, 1958, pp.375, 378; Benjamin B. Olshin, A Sea Discovered: Pre-Columbian Conceptions and Depictions of the Atlantic Ocean, Toronto, University of Toronto, 1994, p.141.
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".“Poft paucos inde dies rediit ab antipodibus occiduis Chriftophorus quidam Colonus vir Ligur”; P. Martire ad Io. Borromeo, pridie id.Maii mccccxciii, in Pietro Martire d' Anghiera, Opus epistolarum Petri Martyris Anglerii Mediolanensis, Aedibus Michaelis de Eguia, 1530, lib.VI, f.xxxiv. 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). Atlas de Fernão Vaz Dourado: reprodcão fidelissima do exemplar do Torre do Tombo, datado de Goa, 1571, Porto, Livraria Civilizacao, 1948, fol.18.
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.
The current world record-holder Airbus A350-900ULR is capable of flying , or roughly 90% of an average antipodal distance. Singapore Airlines currently holds the world record for the Longest flights, 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 Kangaroo Route 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.
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. 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).
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 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.
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.
To within , with at least one major city (population of at least 1 million):
Capital cities within of each other's antipodes:
Other major cities or capitals close to being antipodes:
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 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 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. south-south-east of Firstview and 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, from Jaisalmer, India. The only town on Easter Island, Hanga Roa, is antipodal to the village of Serawa 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, 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 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, , at the intersection of the prime meridian and the equator, has its antipodes at , 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.
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
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