# Do we look at the world upside down? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 3, 2003, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-look-at-the-world-upside-down/146394 "2003-01-03T09:10:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![wooba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/aeb1de/32.png) [@wooba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wooba)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-look-at-the-world-upside-down/146394/1 "2003-01-03T09:10:36Z")
Do we look at the world the wrong way? Should the South pole be the North pole? I was thinking about how the ozone has eroded over Antarctica. It would seem logical to me that the gases that caused this would float up, not down. ---
**Author:** ![fauxpas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e480ec/32.png) [@fauxpas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fauxpas)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-look-at-the-world-upside-down/146394/2 "2003-01-03T09:19:24Z")
Dear wooba, if we look at the world upside down that means the things are upside down? no. It means we naturally see it upside down, but our brain transmits the image up. SO…in context of your question: The South Pole is the South Pole, and the North is the North. ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-look-at-the-world-upside-down/146394/3 "2003-01-03T09:26:20Z")
Umm… okay then. Anyway, if my rapidly receding knowledge of Earth Sciences is worth anything, the Earth is tilted in its orbit, so even the geographic north and south poles aren’t where humans would subjectively place the top and bottom on the globe. I’m hoping I made more sense than Fauxpas did. If not, I apologize… it’s 0430 here. Yeah… that’s it . . ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-look-at-the-world-upside-down/146394/4 "2003-01-03T10:10:17Z")
No, the convention of North = up is just as arbitrary as South = up would be. Keep in mind that nobody is claiming that North = up in real life; only on maps. In fact, if you lay the map out on the table instead of holding it in front of you, North is no longer up. Also, the erosion hole in the ozone layer is _not_ where it is because it floated “up” there. I speculate, and someone can correct me, that North = up came to be accepted as the standard because celestial navigators would have used the North pole star to orient their maps. **fauxpas** seems to be addressing the title of this thread rather than the OP, and is referencing the fact that the image of the world that lands on our retina is actually upside down, and this image then travels along the optic nerve to the brain, where it is arighted. While **Aesiron** ’s point is valid, as you know if you’ve ever looked at a mounted globe, it’s also true that as the Earth spins, the point that is at the “top” of the Earth changes, so assigning the direction of up on a map based on this is unfeasible. ---
**Author:** ![Desmostylus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 10:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-look-at-the-world-upside-down/146394/5 "2003-01-03T10:13:16Z")
**wooba** , the gasses _do_ float up. “Up” means “away from the centre of the earth”, not “toward the north pole”. ---
**Author:** ![Ice\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-look-at-the-world-upside-down/146394/6 "2003-01-03T10:18:35Z")
I agree with **Desmostylus**. It’s the special features of the Antarctic, including its meteorology, that have contributed, not which end of th’ planet is “up”. In fact, areas of the northern latitudes have beeen affected also. [The ozone hole tour.](http://www.atm.ch.cam.ac.uk/tour/part3.html) ---
**Author:** ![Ice\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-look-at-the-world-upside-down/146394/7 "2003-01-03T10:24:05Z")
Then again, there’s always [more than one way to look at things.](http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/resourcebank/maps/page3.html) 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-look-at-the-world-upside-down/146394/8 "2003-01-03T10:24:37Z")
Am I being whooshed here? If ‘up’ and ‘down’ have any meaning in the solar system (i.e. viewing the Earth from outside) then surely ‘up’ would mean ‘away from the sun’ and ‘down’ would mean ‘toward the sun’, although I’m not sure how useful a definition that would be. The reason that the gases don’t float ‘up’ to the North Pole is the same reason that all the oceans don’t drip off the South pole and away into space - there is no ‘up’ and ‘down’ except in relation to local gravity. ---
**Author:** ![Ice\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-look-at-the-world-upside-down/146394/9 "2003-01-03T10:35:15Z")
I’d have thought (layman’s thinking here) that “down” was toward a centre of gravity (ie. the Sun, or Earth), while “up” was away from the centre of gravity. Where there _is_ no gravity, there is no “up” or “down”. In terms of the OP – I’d say there’s been a confusion over the standard appearance of the Earth in map form, plus not taking into account the airflow patterns, etc. In other words, **Mangetout** – no whoosh. Just a lot of “What th’ hey?” ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-look-at-the-world-upside-down/146394/10 "2003-01-03T10:40:25Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mangetout \* > If ‘up’ and ‘down’ have any meaning in the solar system (i.e. viewing the Earth from outside) then surely ‘up’ would mean ‘away from the sun’ and ‘down’ would mean ‘toward the sun’, although I’m not sure how useful a definition that would be. When you’re just dealing with a tiny, planet-sized chunk of the solar system, that might be good, but when you’re looking at the system as a whole, that’s not the most useful definition. The solar system is more like a plate than a ball, with all the planets orbiting in the same plane (more or less). Identifying one side as the top and calling the direction out of it up is the convention we’ve adopted. Something similar is true of the galaxy. ---
**Author:** ![MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MC_Master_of_Ceremonies)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-look-at-the-world-upside-down/146394/11 "2003-01-03T10:43:39Z")
The South Pole is not on the “bottom” of the world, it is on the edge!!! > [@](#): > > “Marjory has always known that the earth is flat, too,” says Charles Johnson. “As far as she knew, everybody in Australia knew it. She was rather shocked when she arrived here and found people speaking of Australia as being ‘down under.’ It really offended her. She would get in quite heated arguments with people who seemed to accuse her of coming from down under the world.” Ultimately, Marjory Johnson swore in an affidavit that she had never hung by her feet in Australia. [http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/fe-scidi.htm](http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/fe-scidi.htm)