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Extreme points of the world

From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.

This is a list of lists of extreme points of the world, the points that are farther north, south, east or west than any other locations on the landmasses, continents or countries.

Contents

1 The world

1.1 Latitude and longitude
1.2 Altitude
1.3 Remoteness
1.4 Centre

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The world

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Latitude and longitude

The northernmost point of the world is the geographic North Pole, in the Arctic Ocean.
The northernmost point on land is Kaffeklubben Island, east of Greenland (83°40'), which lies slightly north of Cape Morris Jesup, Greenland (83°39'). Various shifting gravel bars lie further north, the most famous being Oodaaq. The term Ultima Thule was given by medieval cartographers for the northernmost point of land.
The southernmost point of the world and the southernmost point on land is the geographic South Pole, which is on the continent of Antarctica.
The westernmost point on land, according to the path of the International Date Line, is Attu Island, Alaska.
The easternmost point on land, according to the path of the International Date Line, is Caroline Island, Kiribati.

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Altitude

The highest point is the summit of Everest: 8,850 m (29,035 feet) above sea level.
The lowest point is Challenger Deep, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench: 10,911 m (35,797 feet) below sea level [1] (http://www.rain.org/ocean/ocean-studies-challenger-deep-mariana-trench.html).
The lowest point on land is the shore of the Dead Sea: 417 m below sea level. See List of places on land with elevations below sea level
The point farthest from the Earth's centre is the summit of Chimborazo (due to the Earth not being a perfect sphere), at 6384.4 km (Everest's summit is at 6382.3 km).
The point closest to the Earth's centre (~6353 km) is probably somewhere at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean (depth ~4 km) near the Geographic North pole (the bottom of the Mariana Trench is 6366.4 km from the centre of the Earth).

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Remoteness

The point on land farthest from any ocean is located approximately 320 km (200 mi) from the city of Urumqi, in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China, at 46°16.8′ N 86°40.2′ E (http://kvaleberg.com/extensions/mapsources/index.php?params=46_16.8_N_86_40.2_E_) (in the Dzoosotoyn Elisen Desert). This position is at a straight-line distance of 2648 km (1645 mi) from the nearest coastline.
The point on Earth farthest from any land (called Point Nemo) lies in the South Pacific Ocean at approx. 48° S 125° W (http://kvaleberg.com/extensions/mapsources/index.php?params=48_S_125_W_), which is approximately 2670 km (1660 mi) from the nearest land. It's in the middle of an area of 22,420,000 km² (8,657,000 sq mi) of ocean (equidistant from Pitcairn Island in the north, Marie Byrd Land (Antarctica) in the south, Chatham Island in the West, and Southern Chile in the east). This area is larger in surface than the entire former Soviet Union.
The most remote island is Bouvet Island, an uninhabited dependency of Norway, which lies at coordinates 54°26′ S 3°24′ E (http://kvaleberg.com/extensions/mapsources/index.php?params=54_26_S_3_24_E_). The nearest land is the uninhabited Queen Maud Land, Antarctica, over 1600 km away to the south.
The remotest archipelago consists of Easter Island and Isla Sala y Gómez, which are 480 km apart. They lie 2250 km (1400 mi) from the Pitcairn Islands to the north-west and 3300 km off the west coast of Chile.

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Centre

Since the Earth is a near-sphere, its center (the core) is of course thousands of miles beneath its crust. However, one could perhaps consider the intersection of the Equator and Prime Meridian, located at the coordinates of zero degrees by zero, to be the "centre" of the human world, especially when viewed on a map. This point is located in the Atlantic Ocean approximately 120 miles south of Accra, Ghana.

Some people, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, have claimed a certain city is the centre of the Earth or of the universe. One such claimant is the small town of Felicity, California, in the far southeast corner of the state, where a "Center of the World Pyramid" stands. Local resident and children's book author Jacques-Andres Istel convinced China, France, and Imperial County, California (in which Felicity is located), that Felicity is legally and officially the centre of the world. Surrealist artist Salvador Dali made a even more ambitious claim; that the train station of Perpignan, France, is the centre of the universe. A monument outside the station states, "Centre of the Universe: 0 km."

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