Any two places which are on the opposite sides of the Earth when connected by a straight line passing through the centre of the Earth. For example, the Antipodes Is, New Zealand, 49°42S and 178°50E and the Baie de la Seine, France, 49°45N and 1°W are antipodes. The term is also loosely used by Europeans to refer to Australasia.
In geography, the antipodes (from Greek anti- "opposed" and pous "foot") of any place on Earth is its antipodal point;
In Britain, "the Antipodes" is often used to refer to Australia and New Zealand (and "Antipodeans" for their inhabitants), despite the fact that neither Australia nor New Zealand actually overlap the antipodal points of Britain.
Geography
The antipodes of any place on the Earth is the place which is diametrically opposite it — so situated that a line drawn from the one to the other passes through the centre of the Earth and forms a true diameter.
An antipodal point is sometimes called an antipode, a back-formation from the Greek plural antipodes, whose singular in Greek is antipous.
The antipodes of any place on Earth must be distant from it by 180° of longitude, and must be as many degrees to the north of the equator as the original is to the south;
In the calculation of days and nights, midnight on the one side may be regarded as corresponding to the noon either of the previous or of the following day.
Mathematical description
If the coordinates (longitude and latitude) of a point on the Earth’s surface are (x, y), then the coordinates of the antipodal point can be written as (x ± 180°, −y).
Regional usage
The term antipodes is used in the United Kingdom to refer to Australia and New Zealand, and the inhabitants of these countries are sometimes referred to as antipodeans.
Etymology
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":
The term is taken up by Aristotle (De caelo 308a.20), Strabo, Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius, and was adopted into Latin as antipodes.
In this sense, Antipodes first entered English in 1398 in a translation of the 13th century De Proprietatibus Rerum by Bartholomeus Anglicus, translated by John of Trevisa:
Historical significance
The term plays a certain role in the discussion about the shape of the Earth. However, knowledge of the spherical Earth being widespread even during the Dark Ages, only occasionally disputed on theological grounds, the medieval dispute surrounding the antipodes mainly concerned the question whether they were inhabitable: since the torrid clime was considered impassable, it would have been impossible to evangelize them, posing a dilemma between two equally unacceptable possibilities that either Christ had appeared a second time in the antipodes, or that the inhabitants of the antipodes were irredeemably damned.
Saint Augustine (354–430) argued against people inhabiting the antipodes:
Since these people would have to be descended from Adam, they would have had to travel to the other side of the Earth at some point; Augustine continues:
The idea of dry land, inhabited or not, in the Southern climes, the Terra Australis was introduced by Ptolemy, and appears on European maps as an imaginary continent from the 15th century.
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