And is Australia south of South America?
If I travel east or west, I can circle the globe any number of times, and I’m still traveling east or west.
Crossing the Prime Meridian or the Intl Date Line doesn’t matter.
However, once I cross 0 degrees N or S, my direction switches.
So can you still say that Asia is north of North America, and Australia is south of South America? (And the reverse, also.)
OK, I meant 90 degrees N or S, not 0.
Yes, because, " Once I cross 90 degrees N or S my direction switches." Now reel it in ,I ain’t bitin nomore.
“Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”-Marx
I’m not sure what you’re getting at, but the northernmost point of North America is at a higher nothern latitude than the northernmost point of Asia.
The southernmost point of South America is at a higher southern latitude than the southernmost point of Australia.
When explorers were trying to win fame by gaining the title of “Farthest North” or “Farthest South” the latitude was the defining part. I don’t how else you can measure it, especially since north and south are just arbitrary terms we have given to those directions.
No, you can’t, and here’s why:
East and West are terms relative to the Earth’s rotation on its axis. If you’re moving in the same direction as the Earth rotates, you’re moving East, and if you’re moving the opposite direction, you’re moving West, no matter how many times you circle the globe.
North and South are absolute, based on the axes upon which the Earth rotates. If you go north, pass the north pole, and continue walking in the same direction, you are walking away from the north rotation point, not toward it, therefore you are walking south.
Chaim Mattis Keller
cmkeller@compuserve.com
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
No. If you go directly south, eventually you hit the south pole. From the south pole all directions along the earth’s suface are north. Similarly for morth. If you are not traveling directly south you still eventually curve back north. Not curving you say? YOu must be on a different planet.
East and west are different. They are more like clockwise and counter-clockwise.
If men had wings,
and bore black feathers,
few of them would be clever enough to be crows.
No. 
The North Pole is the northern-most point. If you keep going the same way after passing it, you’re going south.
Vice versa for the South Pole.
Geez, this is hard to explain. Kinda like why left/right are reversed in mirrors, but not up/down.
Looking at the definitions of latitude and longitude:
[ul][li]latitude (of a point on the Earth’s surface) - The number of degrees in the arc of a meridian from the equator to the point; the angle which the plane of the horizon makes with the Earth’s axis; the elevation of the pole of the heavens; the angle which a plumb line at the point makes with a plumb line on the same meridian at the equator.[/li][li]longitude - The number of degrees in the arc of the equator cut off by the meridian through the place under consideration and the meridian through some established point (Greenwich, England)[/ul][/li]
So, basically, the North Pole is the North Pole because you can’t have a latitude greater than 90[sup]o[/sup], and all latitude approaching 90 on all norther meridians meet at this single point. If you said a given point was at 91[sup]o[/sup]N, 77[sup]o[/sup]W, by definition you should have measured it’s latitude on the meridian line that passes through the point and the equator. That meridian would be 103[sup]o[/sup]E, and the latitude therefore should be 89[sup]o[/sup].
By longitudes definition, there’s nothing wrong with calling 155[sup]o[/sup]E 205[sup]o[/sup]W instead. I suppose you could go periodic and say 77[sup]o[/sup]W is 437[sup]o[/sup]W too. I presume that 180[sup]o[/sup] was chosen as a standard maximum for Earth longitude measurement so that both hemispheres are equal.
There’s also no East Pole nor West Pole; poles by definition are points.
This all came about because the N/S/E/W measurements were devised before the nature of the Earth as a sphere (spheroid) was fully understood. If civilization had centered around the polar regions, who knows what sort of mapping system we would have devised.
The Canadians. They walk among us. William Shatner. Michael J. Fox. Monty Hall. Mike Meyers. Alex Trebek. All of them Canadians. All of them here.
from Mjollnor:
This is for those people who like asking misleading questions and then playing on ambiguity and unstated assumptions. Like stating that I can walk at 60 miles per hour. Sure I can. On a train traveling 59 mph I will walk at 1 mph vs the train, which puts me at 60 mph to the ground.
You are taking the position of starting in Australia and walking South until you cross the pole, at which point you walk North to South America. But that does not make South America north of Australia. It makes South America north of some intermediate point in your route of travel (i.e. the pole). Because you had to walk south first. How far north did you walk? How far south did you walk? Do the vector addition.
Here is an elaboration. Start at the southern tip of Australia and walk East and South, but don’t go to the pole. Now at some intermediate point (like below Africa), turn and walk East and North, until you get to the tip of SA. The traveling eastward is irrelevant, which is farther south? It works the same if you don’t walk East at all, but start due south. You still end up “turning” and walking North.
It’s like tracing a path on a map. Hold the map still and move the pencil. Now hold the pencil still and move the map. You can get the same path either way. That’s the difference in the paths you took - one case you did the turning and in one case the Earth did the turning for you.
BWa-ha-ha-ha-haa…
And Lo! the land shall be lit with an eerie northern light,
And the number of Rush fans shall increase,
And the special-effects wizards shall spin their webs,
And the animators shall bring joy to the hearts of millions,
And the speedometers will be marked in kilometres per hour, so that everyone gets to feel like they’re going faster,
And cereal boxes shall contain a multitude of languages,
And distinctive one- and two-dollar coins shall be accepted by the multitudes,
And reasonableness, compromise, and civility shall prevail among men and women (and all other people of whatever gender or mixture of genders they choose to profess at the aforementioned time),
And the days of the Maple Leaf shall be long in the land…
“Rigardu, kaj vi ekvidos, eh?” -partly by Magnu
a bit OT but do you get dizzy standing at the poles? i mean you would be spinning at an insane rate, wouldn’t you?
eggo
Yeah but what the heck ever happened to “EurAsia”?
The ever insensitive, politically incorrect PitBullDawg.
Political correctness is a disease. Cure it with the truth.