Antipodal points are as far away from each other as possible. This gave rise to the name of the Antipodes Islands of New Zealand, which are close to the antipode of London. With the exception of a part of the Perth metropolitan area near Baldivis and Rockingham that is antipodal to Bermuda , the antipodes of Australia are in the North Atlantic Ocean , while parts of Spain , Portugal , France and Morocco are antipodal to New Zealand.
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 North Atlantic Ocean , while the antipodes of southern Africa are in the North Pacific Ocean. Since the antipode of any place on the Earth is the place that is diametrically opposite of it, a line drawn from one to the other will pass through the centre of Earth and form a true diameter.
Most of the Earth's land surfaces have ocean at their antipodes; this is a natural consequence of most of the Earth's surface being covered in water. Solar noon i. Sunrise and sunset do not quite oppose each other at antipodes due to refraction of sunlight. This relation holds true whether the Earth is approximated as a perfect sphere or as a reference ellipsoid. In terms of the usual way these geographic coordinates are given, this transformation can be expressed symbolically as.
The Greek word is attested in Plato 's dialogue Timaeus , already referring to a spherical Earth, explaining the relativity of the terms "above" and "below":. For if there were any solid body in equipoise at the centre of the universe, there would be nothing to draw it to this extreme rather than to that, for they are all perfectly similar; and if a person were to go round the world in a circle, he would often, when standing at the antipodes of his former position, speak of the same point as above and below; for, as I was saying just now, to speak of the whole which is in the form of a globe as having one part above and another below is not like a sensible man.
The term is taken up by Aristotle De caelo a. The Latin word changed its sense from the original "under the feet, opposite side" to "those with the feet opposite", i. Medieval illustrations imagine them in some way "inverted", with their feet growing out of their heads, pointing upward.
