Globe Rambler

Did you ever wondered how the Earth looks like at night if you were in a spaceship on it’s orbit? Here are the photos.

The photo is actually made up like a puzzle from many other photos all taken during the night. As you (probably) know, when in one place is night on other parts of the world is day, so the puzzle was made from separate nightly pictures taken from different satellites and also when the sky was cloud-free.

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You may observe how North America, Europe and Japan, as more economic developed areas, appear more lighted than other zones. China and India, two of the world economies with the fastest growing rates, are not very far, and then come isolated white spots representing Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Middle East, Brazil and Argentina. Meanwhile, Africa is in it’s vast majority sunk in darkness except small areas in South Africa and the Mediterranean coastline in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt’s Cairo area.

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This is how Earth actually looks like in a normal day. This picture also is made from pieces taken from different satellites but this was done only in order to get a full view of Earth’s surface.

I don’t know about you but when I was a kid, my friends and I, were sure that if we could dig a hole through Earth we would reach China…Crazy isn’t it? Well, not quite. Let’s imagine for the sake of argument that one could really drill a hole through Earth’s center. Where would he end up?

For this question we turn to geography. An antipodal point is the region of Earth that is diametrically opposite from the point of reference. What does it actually mean: if you are standing in Times Square for example, in order to find the antipodes of that location, you should draw a line that goes straight to the Earth’s center, and when the line hits ground surface…that’s it!

So what were my chances to reach China and visit sites like “The Great Wall”? Zero. In fact, having a starting point in the northern hemisphere makes possible reaching land only in the southern one. Not only that I’ll be far away from China but also chances of reaching any country are slim as the southern hemisphere has more water and less land than the northern one. In the photo beneath, you can see a representation of Earth’s antipodal points. The regions where pink overlaps blue are land antipodes. As you can see, if one lives in the U.S, his antipodes are in the middle of the ocean.

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The only regions from which an American could reach land on the other side of the world are a small coastal area in Alaska (but you reach Antarctica, so what’s the point from going from cold to colder?) and the Hawaiian Islands, their antipode being Botswana.
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