A Truly Useful Mapping Tool Wednesday, September 10, 2008

As any kid who grew up in the US knows, if you were to dig a hole and not stop digging until you reached the other side of the planet, you'd end up in China or Australia, right? Well now you can find out just how wrong you were! This is off the charts for sheer awesomeness: an interactive mapping tool for finding antipodes – that is, for finding exactly where you'd end up if you dug a tunnel to the other side of the planet from a given spot. I found it via a Discover magazine article.

And you know what? Funny... not a single spot in the lower 48 states is directly opposite any major land mass at all. Okay, that's not 100% true... a spot in northern Montana maps to a small island near Antarctica, but that's it for the continental US. Northern Alaska maps to the edge of Antarctica and a tunnel dug in Bermuda would land you just off the coast of Perth. In order to get to China, apparently you'd have to start in Argentina.

But interestingly enough, a tunnel dug in Madrid would put you right in a hamlet called Weber, New Zealand. And Weber is right near a hill named Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu, which translates roughly as "The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one".

Now you know.