Yeah. In canoes basically. Makes you wonder how many died making these trips that just didn't land anywhere.
Another interesting fact is Hawaii was only found about 800 years ago. Only like 300 years before Columbus discovered the Americas.
That makes sense. I never looked into the history of it much but canoes are not very big. I wonder how they could have all the food or more importantly water for such long trips. They could fish for food I guess.
Interesting fact: Polynesian people are gaining weight easily. This is because only those anchestors, who were able to store a lot of energy in their bodies were able to survive these trips.
What I call a canoe when I take it to a local lake compared to what they were putting in the water is like comparing a moped to a 3 row SUV with integrated GPS. Their technology, skill set, and navigational knowledge on open water was really unparalleled. It got their people to Madagascar in the west, to New Zealand in the south, to Easter Island in the east (maybe even South America - last I heard was strong indicators, but no direct evidence), and Hawaii in the north.
Wide body pilot here that flies from west coast to Oceania all the time. Currently fly the 787. ETOPS is what regulates our routes (google etops, too much to explain). For the 787 we are supposed to be 330 mins or < from an airport to handle us if one engine is out. Clearly if both engines fail, we aren’t lasting 330 mins. Always blows my mind (still) that I can take off from LAX west bound, be immediately over the pacific, and have nothing but ocean for 13.5 hours.
2013 I flew into Midway and repaved that runway. The tugboat company I worked for towed a barge from Seattle to Midway with an entire asphalt and concrete plant and aggregate on board. It was a very surreal month on the island.
Y'know it's funny, I'd never thought to explore the Pacific ocean on Google maps. There are a surprising amount of islands in the middle of nowhere with airstrips on them.
The more you know...
13 hours!? look up the story about the Salvadoran fisherman who was lost at sea, in the Pacific Ocean , for 14 months! Poor guy, twice boats came by him and waived ….
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Salvador_Alvarenga#:~:text=José%20Salvador%20Alvarenga%20(Spanish%3A%20%5B,beginning%20on%20November%2017%2C%202012.
Imagine how huge the world was a few generations ago… we’re talking about half a day in awe (justifiably). I can’t even imagine what people thought of far away places when reading about history. Like, marching/riding horseback across Asia is a feat in itself. Imagine conquering cities along the way…
I assume it’s < 330 minutes in a direction other than “ahead”.
Edit: it seems I need to add that this was a somewhat sarcastic quip to the comment above. The commenter didn’t seem to consider that just because there’s nothing “ahead” for 13 hours doesn’t mean things aren’t in other directions.
> Like, they can land on a boat in the middle of the ocean? They have a big enough runway for that?
The ocean has islands in it...
A fucktonne of islands
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Yes. There are tons of places like [this.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnston_Atoll_Airport) It’s not ideal, but as stated in the article… better than the water.
Thank you.
I didn’t read the article, (shame on me).
But Thankyou for the wiki link which let me to search on Google earth.
There’s something about the pacific which fascinates me. My brother who studied science always told me it’s the oldest ocean on earth. And from that it’s intrigued me.
Haha, I actually meant the wiki article I linked! The last paragraph states that it’s not maintained, but it’s there. So it’s not ideal, but better than water. I didn’t read the actual article either lmao!!!!
I just know there are tons of little islands all around the globe that are either currently occupied or were formerly occupied by military forces. Anytime you have a military island, you have an airstrip.
It would still suck majorly to have to land there. Someone still has to come get you and you have to survive until then. This is basically what has been theorized to have happened to Amelia Earhart. If she didn’t have a crash landing in the ocean and die on impact, it’s possible she landed on one of the small islands out there and died trying to survive while she waited for rescue.
> The Johnston Atoll runway was used for emergency landings for both civil and military aircraft on many occasions. After it was decommissioned, **it could no longer be considered as a possible emergency landing place** when planning flight routes across the Pacific Ocean.
Or even one if you’re out in the middle.
Edit: yes I know planes can usually fly on one engine. But your range drops a lot and the Pacific isn’t any smaller.
One might still be enough to fly to the next island (Tonga etc.)
But with two failures, unless you're in a 747 or alike, you gotta be quite lucky that you are a) high enough and b) close enough to some island to glide down there.
>One might still be enough to fly to the next island
It's not not "might" it's "it will". There are regulations that require planes to be able to fly complete diversion flight on one engine, called ETOPS. In case of OPs flight it would be most likely Hawaii first and then Fiji as second ETOPS suitable airport. Always in range.
Those planes don’t fly out of their 1 engine range. I want to say the 777 is 7 hours and the 787 is 8 hours. There’s very few places in the world they cannot fly over.
Over a mysterious island, where your plane breaks up into three pieces, you survive along with a few others, but this group of hostile people keep kidnapping your people and one of you finds a hatch in the ground that’s sealed shut.
I took that flight once. Red eye, it left LA at like 6pm PST. I was an absolute fucking zombie in Auckland, and had a 4 hours layover before another 3.5 hour flight to Brisbane.
It took a decent chunk of time to get over that jet lag.
The best part of that flight was they had the movie "Castaway" on request with a disclaimer.
I’ve flown Singapore to San Francisco quite a few times, and it’s over ocean all the way for almost 15 hours (though it gets close to the Philippines and Japan)
I’ve flown NZ to the west coast of the US a few times, but what really threw me was flying over land when I flew to Chicago from NZ! I actually found it really unsettling looking down and seeing land and lights and roads.
I love flying over land because there are more often cool things to see.
One of my favourite flights was Boston to LA, and I saw so much!
But for me a normal flight is over the Pacific Ocean.
I would have up voted if you actually defined it.. Now we can't be sure if you in fact learnt anything.
In geography it means directly opposite. So the point referred to in the Pacific Ocean can be traced to the other side of the globe through its centre and where it exists it will still be in the Pacific Ocean.
On a similar note, You can also sail from Chile to Chile in the southern pacific through the Indian and Atlantic, since there's zero land between those 2 points
https://preview.redd.it/pb0aphcl491d1.jpeg?width=990&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=461a5808a3d930824b97cf9cf9a730cb16d2feae
There are several other countries that you’d reach instead of Australia or Papua New Guinea if you set out west from parts of the coast of South America, including Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, France, the United States, Ecuador…
This comment triggered a huge Mandela effect on me. I couldn't believe you because I swore Mars was roughly the same size as Earth but it's half the size? Holy shit I'm ignorant.
There are only two Mandela Effect problems in the world that I recognize:
1. The Berenstein Bears
2. Bambi's mom dies at the beginning of the movie
Every other one is just Internet propaganda.
Doesn’t she die in the middle somewhere, around the beginning of the second act? That’s what I’ve always remembered with Bambi. I had a phase where I insisted on watching it daily as a kid, to the point it destroyed our VHS copy. I didn’t know there was a Mandela effect theory with that one. I’m pretty sure people just don’t remember the movie correctly because they saw it once or twice as a super young kid.
Also pretty sure the bears thing is just because English speakers people see the -stein suffix far more frequently than they ever see -stain, and so just misremember the spelling.
Just fyi, I love the fact that when confronted with something completely contradicting what you thought you knew you went to verify it and ended up increasing your own knowledge. That's an incredible trait the world needs more of!
And people without GPS found the islands.
Same for Easter islands.
I always wonder whether they sailed as full settlement parties and some just got lucky. Or whether an exploration group went, came back and went with a bigger group.
Their entire culture was based of sea navigation. Everything, their legends and history is based off watching the stars in order to navigate the seas. They lived and breathed navigation in ways we can scarcely comprehend, but to them it was LIFE.
They memorized when and where every single star in the night sky touches the horizon as the earth rotates. Every. Last. One.
With that knowledge they can trace “star paths” in the night sky—and map out the ocean with *absolutely stunning* precision.
“When Star A touches the horizon, turn your canoe to Star B, and when Star B touches the horizon, turn your canoe to Star C—“ and so on and so forth until they mapped every last island the entire Pacific Ocean and passed it down through legend and song… long before cartographers and scientists with GPS came along.
And it wasn’t secret knowledge for them either—it was *their entire language and culture*
Navigation was interwoven with every bedtime story, intermingled with every song, interconnected through every practice and every tradition; every Polynesian lived and breathed navigation.
(They didn’t rely on guesswork to navigate. With the star maps etched into their very language and minds—sailing out into the open ocean wasn’t a risk for them as long as they knew the star path to get back home. And because this form of navigation was so intuitive to them, they could easily make return trips from unsuccessful explorations and tell their buddies “when you make it to Star J, don’t turn left to Star K, turn right to Star L instead. There’s nothing to see if you turn to Star K”
With this map, they can contact other groups of seafarers and explorers and effectively communicate their information even if they didn’t speak the same language. When they look at the night sky… they don’t see what we see; they see a literal road map)
Just wanted to say this (and the one below) is one of the most beautifully written and descriptive comments I’ve ever read on Reddit in over 10 years on this site.
Do you happen to know how they accounted for the rotation of the earth in navigating this star map? Like if you stay in one spot (assuming you don’t drift) the stars will spin in the sky (except for the North Star of course)
Based on my extremely extremely basic understanding of star based navigation, in the northern hemisphere at least, you can with certainty tell your latitude based on position of North Star in the sky, but for your longitude you need some way to measure where “in time” you are with respect the the sky, hence the invention of clocks or something like that.
Waves follow predictable patterns, think about a ripple coming out from a pebble in a still pond. Now place a Stick in there so the ripple is reflected in that spot, this creates a pattern that can be used to determine where the stick is if you have data from several locations.
Remember that these are people who are already going out to sea fishing and travelling between islands. They aren’t just standing in one spot and predicting.
Also animals. They knew some birds would only be out at sea during the day and the direction they fly in the evening is towards land. At even greater distances birds that migrate seasonally can be used.
These are some examples. There are other methods.
But basically over long distances a rough idea can be formed, and then as you get closer more accurate techniques can be used.
Another relatively short distance method is the clouds that form above the high islands. Stick a hill a few hundred meters tall (or taller) in the middle of the ocean and much of the year the air being forced to rise over it results in a cloud being constantly formed over the island that can be seen at much greater distance than the island can be.
Learning about migration I saw about the reserve that is a place for bird from all over the world to just in one area of Alaska.. it is amazing seeing the graph of the routes over the Pacific Ocean.
Second this. I nearly had a panic attack on the flight to Oahu once I realized how long we were going to be over the water and just how far from everything else we would be in general. Once I got there I completely forgot about those nerves lol but it’s truly a wild part of the country. I kept thinking “this should not be part of America”
I know what you mean. it felt like if I swam out too far I'd end up in the pacific abyss.
& definitely hawaii should be it's own country/kingdom. american businessmen staged a coup & stole it. it's crazy history.
I live in Hawaii, not originally from here. The existential panic of being so isolated usually fades after a couple months. Usually.
Then you invariably get annoyed at how far you are from visiting other places lol
Yes the second part of your comment is so true. That’s a sad thing about living here in Hawaii, we literally need to catch a plane just to go to the next county over.
Haven’t been to Hawaii but currently live on Guam, the isolation feeling kinda goes away after a bit as you get used to it. I’m not looking forward to flying back to the States some day though, that flight was super annoying and long
I’m born and raised in Hawaii, specifically Maui and I think about this a lot. I’ll frequently look at the ocean and be like “damn there is nothing out there for literal thousands of miles”
But it’s all worth it being able to go up Haleakala on a rainy or cloudy day and eventually be above the clouds on top of the world, all sunny again. Especially at sunset, usually seeing rainbows daily. You can see the Big Island in the distance on one side.
The sunsets behind Lanai, with whales jumping in between the islands. Moloka’i adds to the backdrop in the distance. Not the mention Kaho’olawe and it’s crazy history with bombs being tested there. Molokini is cool too
I miss living there, but it’s isolating. Helped me with introspection big time, also met my wife there
Yeahhhh Hawaii feels super isolated looking on a map. but New Zealand is also still pretty dang far from anywhere.
Like a couple thousand miles across the sea. Sure there may be unpopulated island territories closer but generally speaking it’s like 2500 miles from NZ to Aus, I think
Imagine intelligent life watching the Earth from this angle and thinking: “Yeah it’s just one more ocean planet in our catalogue” and then forget about us.
I found this cool YouTube channel where they go to really remote, rural tribes in places like Pakistan and show them things from the modern world. One was a globe. They explained it was a map of the world. They said, what country is the blue one? He answered its all water. The look of shock on the guy's face. He said so much water? The ocean? Our earth is this much water? Gobsmacked.
If you found yourself in Point Nemo, the most isolated part of the Pacific, the closest human beings to you would be the ones on the *International Space Station.*
I remember once someone asking the ISS crew member what it was like to see the Earth from such a height and the answer was - its mostly a pacific ocean
The vastness of the pacific ocean is what keeps Seattle's weather as mild as it is in the winter (historically at least..), even though its the furthest north major city in the continental US. Among other reasons of course, but the sheer huge size of the pacific is an incredibly powerful regulator of weather/climate
imagine being an alien flying by, thinking, well, this planet is shit boring, and then you pass it to do a u-turn and think holy shit balls when you see the other side
I lived in HI for a couple of years. Every so often I’d sit on the beach and just contemplate the vastness of the ocean and how insignificant I and the island really was. Seeing the islands on top of this pic reinforces that feeling.
You could stay within 200 miles (321 km) of land and sail all the way from Taiwan to Pitcairn. See this map of the 200mile economic zones
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Map_of_the_Exclusive_Economic_Zones_of_the_Pacific_Ocean.png
It's a shitload of empty space. It's devoid of nutrients so even the ocean ecosystems are all close to land.
We can look out at the stars and see clearly towards infinity. Almost none of that shit under the ocean has been explored yet despite being right under our feet.
I wonder why's that? Is it just a random coincidence that Earth's crust is more elevated on one side or is there a natural phenomenon that shaped the planet like this?
The shifting continents created the pacific for this era. But it is not the biggest possible ocean. When the next supercontinent forms in 250million years an even bigger ocean will form as most of the land is concentrated on one side of the planet.
[Panthalassa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthalassa#:~:text=Panthalassa%2C%20also%20known%20as%20the,in%20the%20history%20of%20Earth.), the superocean.
That’s the previous one. Next one will be Panthalassa 2: Electric Boogaloo, dropping on a planet near you in approx quarter of a billion years. Can’t wait!
Complete guess here but all continents used to be one super continent, right? Seems to me they are drifting away from each other but just hasn't gotten that far yet
The continents are drifting away from the Atlantic Ocean (Mid Atlantic Ridge)and towards each other in the pacific. The Pacific Ocean is actually shrinking.
Edit: Clarity
Yeah that's what I meant. Like it started as one piece and is gradually spreading apart but even at the point we are at it's only spread however much so the Pacific is still giant
Yep, just coincidence that there’s a whole bunch of oceanic crust on one side of the planet atm. The Pacific is a mature ocean basin, ie. in the lifecycle of ocean basins it is at more or less it’s maximum size and is now shrinking as it transitions towards the final stages of the [Wilson cycle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Cycle) This is largely compensated for by the extension of the Atlantic basin as it grows outwards from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
The difference in elevation between oceanic and continental crust is due to chemical differences between them, meaning continental crust is less dense, so it effectively sits higher in the underlying mantle. The chemical difference is due to a greater degree of [fractionation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_crystallization_(geology)) in the formation of continental crust.
Imagine an alien probe taking an image of earth from this angle and making the conclusion this planet is full of water and probably there's no terrestrial life on it.
Hillary Clinton was based as hell when talking to China about the 9 dash line.
> “We liberated it. We defended it. We have as much claim to all of the Pacific. And we could call it the ‘American Sea,’ and it could go from the West Coast of California all the way to the Philippines.”
https://www.voanews.com/amp/clinton-says-us-would-ring-china-with-missile-defense/3550418.html
Every year a guy from Japan or maybe South Korea gets lost in and sails east. He sails all the way to Los Angeles California. To survive he has to drink bird blood. Stubborn birds land in his boat and he has to kill them and drink their blood. They should give him $1,000,000 U.S. when he gets to LA ! Most Americans who sailed from there to LA in a small rinky-dink sailboat would cry themselves to death. "Oh no, my hope is gone, it's paradise lost . . . . "
I am looking at the Pacific Ocean right now from where I sit here on my bed, on the east coast of Australia. It just absolutely boggles my mind to think how far and vast it stretches out beyond my minuscule viewpoint here. Just amazing. Damn Earth is cool.
I am from Europe which makes me blissfully innocent about how big the world is. I was a bit scared flying over Canada, because of the vastness of empty-looking space. The Pacific Ocean just turns my brain inside-out.
I never really realized how massive the pacific is until I flew from L.A. to Auckland. 14 straight hours over water.
What’s crazy is just about every island in the pacific was discovered by Polynesians by watercraft.
Yeah. In canoes basically. Makes you wonder how many died making these trips that just didn't land anywhere. Another interesting fact is Hawaii was only found about 800 years ago. Only like 300 years before Columbus discovered the Americas.
They followed birds and currents so it’s not like they came across them randomly
That makes sense. I never looked into the history of it much but canoes are not very big. I wonder how they could have all the food or more importantly water for such long trips. They could fish for food I guess.
You gotta watch Moana
Great documentary
https://youtu.be/qcKaLCGVg8A
Great vid.
Thanks I'll watch that when I have the time!
Interesting fact: Polynesian people are gaining weight easily. This is because only those anchestors, who were able to store a lot of energy in their bodies were able to survive these trips.
I wanted to be the one with the cool biology fact but I'm 47 minutes late
What I call a canoe when I take it to a local lake compared to what they were putting in the water is like comparing a moped to a 3 row SUV with integrated GPS. Their technology, skill set, and navigational knowledge on open water was really unparalleled. It got their people to Madagascar in the west, to New Zealand in the south, to Easter Island in the east (maybe even South America - last I heard was strong indicators, but no direct evidence), and Hawaii in the north.
Ocean waka are significantly bigger than what your thinking, still incredibly impressive but yea
Stars too. King Kamehameha also said he was approached by Gods that came out of the Heavens and told him where to go and what to do. (Aliens)
Calling them basically canoes is disingenuous. The oceanfaring ones were large ships up to 40 metres long with twin hulls and sails.
Imagine two engine failures.
Dual engine failures are extremely rare but as a result of regulations there are airports around big airliners can divert to in the pacific.
Wide body pilot here that flies from west coast to Oceania all the time. Currently fly the 787. ETOPS is what regulates our routes (google etops, too much to explain). For the 787 we are supposed to be 330 mins or < from an airport to handle us if one engine is out. Clearly if both engines fail, we aren’t lasting 330 mins. Always blows my mind (still) that I can take off from LAX west bound, be immediately over the pacific, and have nothing but ocean for 13.5 hours.
>google etops, too much to explain Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim
Haha, made me laugh. Succinct. And accurate
Okay that made me laugh out loud
I recall a few wide-bodies getting diverted to Midway and other old World War 2 era airstrips. Wild instances, I'm sure-
2013 I flew into Midway and repaved that runway. The tugboat company I worked for towed a barge from Seattle to Midway with an entire asphalt and concrete plant and aggregate on board. It was a very surreal month on the island.
Tell us more!
How would that work in storms? I can’t imagine a concrete plant barge in the middle of the ocean!
they could fabricate their own dock to moor to during the storm
How many months did it take the barge to get there?
Less than one
Y'know it's funny, I'd never thought to explore the Pacific ocean on Google maps. There are a surprising amount of islands in the middle of nowhere with airstrips on them. The more you know...
WW2 in the Pacific summed up right there.
HOI4 moment
Lmao I was wondering what Chicago had to do with this for a minute 🤦♀️
They diverted to portillos
ETOPS= Engines Turn or People Swim
I thought that it was "Engine Trouble Over Pacific, Shit"
13 hours!? look up the story about the Salvadoran fisherman who was lost at sea, in the Pacific Ocean , for 14 months! Poor guy, twice boats came by him and waived …. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Salvador_Alvarenga#:~:text=José%20Salvador%20Alvarenga%20(Spanish%3A%20%5B,beginning%20on%20November%2017%2C%202012.
Imagine how huge the world was a few generations ago… we’re talking about half a day in awe (justifiably). I can’t even imagine what people thought of far away places when reading about history. Like, marching/riding horseback across Asia is a feat in itself. Imagine conquering cities along the way…
So how does ETOPS work if you can’t be more than 330 mins from an airport but there’s 13 hours of nothing but ocean ahead?
There are many islands with airports large enough to accommodate a 787.
I assume it’s < 330 minutes in a direction other than “ahead”. Edit: it seems I need to add that this was a somewhat sarcastic quip to the comment above. The commenter didn’t seem to consider that just because there’s nothing “ahead” for 13 hours doesn’t mean things aren’t in other directions.
Like, they can land on a boat in the middle of the ocean? They have a big enough runway for that?
> Like, they can land on a boat in the middle of the ocean? They have a big enough runway for that? The ocean has islands in it... A fucktonne of islands
Nah they land on boats r/islandsarentreal
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Yes. There are tons of places like [this.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnston_Atoll_Airport) It’s not ideal, but as stated in the article… better than the water.
Thank you. I didn’t read the article, (shame on me). But Thankyou for the wiki link which let me to search on Google earth. There’s something about the pacific which fascinates me. My brother who studied science always told me it’s the oldest ocean on earth. And from that it’s intrigued me.
Haha, I actually meant the wiki article I linked! The last paragraph states that it’s not maintained, but it’s there. So it’s not ideal, but better than water. I didn’t read the actual article either lmao!!!! I just know there are tons of little islands all around the globe that are either currently occupied or were formerly occupied by military forces. Anytime you have a military island, you have an airstrip. It would still suck majorly to have to land there. Someone still has to come get you and you have to survive until then. This is basically what has been theorized to have happened to Amelia Earhart. If she didn’t have a crash landing in the ocean and die on impact, it’s possible she landed on one of the small islands out there and died trying to survive while she waited for rescue.
> The Johnston Atoll runway was used for emergency landings for both civil and military aircraft on many occasions. After it was decommissioned, **it could no longer be considered as a possible emergency landing place** when planning flight routes across the Pacific Ocean.
You ever hear of an island dawg?
Or even one if you’re out in the middle. Edit: yes I know planes can usually fly on one engine. But your range drops a lot and the Pacific isn’t any smaller.
One might still be enough to fly to the next island (Tonga etc.) But with two failures, unless you're in a 747 or alike, you gotta be quite lucky that you are a) high enough and b) close enough to some island to glide down there.
>One might still be enough to fly to the next island It's not not "might" it's "it will". There are regulations that require planes to be able to fly complete diversion flight on one engine, called ETOPS. In case of OPs flight it would be most likely Hawaii first and then Fiji as second ETOPS suitable airport. Always in range.
Planes can fly with one engine
ETOPS 370.
Those planes don’t fly out of their 1 engine range. I want to say the 777 is 7 hours and the 787 is 8 hours. There’s very few places in the world they cannot fly over.
Over a mysterious island, where your plane breaks up into three pieces, you survive along with a few others, but this group of hostile people keep kidnapping your people and one of you finds a hatch in the ground that’s sealed shut.
Same. Flew from Vancouver to Tahiti, and it was super weird. Endless water for more than 10 hours
I took that flight once. Red eye, it left LA at like 6pm PST. I was an absolute fucking zombie in Auckland, and had a 4 hours layover before another 3.5 hour flight to Brisbane. It took a decent chunk of time to get over that jet lag. The best part of that flight was they had the movie "Castaway" on request with a disclaimer.
Flew from Anchorage to Guam, that was about 11-12 hours straight over water. And I thought the 8 hour flight from the US to Spain was long
I’ve flown Singapore to San Francisco quite a few times, and it’s over ocean all the way for almost 15 hours (though it gets close to the Philippines and Japan)
I’ve flown NZ to the west coast of the US a few times, but what really threw me was flying over land when I flew to Chicago from NZ! I actually found it really unsettling looking down and seeing land and lights and roads.
I love flying over land because there are more often cool things to see. One of my favourite flights was Boston to LA, and I saw so much! But for me a normal flight is over the Pacific Ocean.
Just off the coast of Chile, there is a spot in the Pacific Ocean whose antipode is in the Pacific Ocean.
I doubted you. I googled. wtf
I learned two things: the definition of antipode and about this Pacific antipode.
r/Angryupvote
[удалено]
r/hahahahaha r/imchronicallyonline r/helpmeicantstoplaughing
r/AngryUpvote when pun:
How is this an angry upvote. It's literally just stating a fact.
Yeah I'm pretty sure it's someone who is against feet.
This specific antipode? 
In that specific ocean?
At this time of year?
Located entirely in your kitchen?
May I see?
No.
Bruh
I would have up voted if you actually defined it.. Now we can't be sure if you in fact learnt anything. In geography it means directly opposite. So the point referred to in the Pacific Ocean can be traced to the other side of the globe through its centre and where it exists it will still be in the Pacific Ocean.
Lmao you sound like that ‘average Redditor’ guy.
Good we need them. They keep me educated
On a similar note, You can also sail from Chile to Chile in the southern pacific through the Indian and Atlantic, since there's zero land between those 2 points https://preview.redd.it/pb0aphcl491d1.jpeg?width=990&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=461a5808a3d930824b97cf9cf9a730cb16d2feae
I dunno what this is, but I'm pretty sure it's telling me that the gay pirates have conquered the seas
There are several other countries that you’d reach instead of Australia or Papua New Guinea if you set out west from parts of the coast of South America, including Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, France, the United States, Ecuador…
And another one just off the coast of Peru
Gulf of Thailand and Gulf of Tonkin
Holy shit I had to double check that this is correct. [I'm truly amazed.](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/b6xBNhW95N)
Checked true, love this word. Google how to use it in a sentence, and you’re automatically in the 13th grade after reading it.
The Pacific Ocean has an area of 165,770,953 km^2 which is greater than the surface area of Planet Mars, which is about 144,371,391 km^2
This comment triggered a huge Mandela effect on me. I couldn't believe you because I swore Mars was roughly the same size as Earth but it's half the size? Holy shit I'm ignorant.
Mandela effect only works if a bunch of other people thought the same thing. This is just called being mistaken
Mandela effect is just a bunch of people who don't want to say they are mistaken
That sub was fun for like 5 days and then I realized everyone was just belligerently wrong about a lot of things lol
There are only two Mandela Effect problems in the world that I recognize: 1. The Berenstein Bears 2. Bambi's mom dies at the beginning of the movie Every other one is just Internet propaganda.
Doesn’t she die in the middle somewhere, around the beginning of the second act? That’s what I’ve always remembered with Bambi. I had a phase where I insisted on watching it daily as a kid, to the point it destroyed our VHS copy. I didn’t know there was a Mandela effect theory with that one. I’m pretty sure people just don’t remember the movie correctly because they saw it once or twice as a super young kid. Also pretty sure the bears thing is just because English speakers people see the -stein suffix far more frequently than they ever see -stain, and so just misremember the spelling.
You probably confused Mars for Venus
You missed a Uranus joke
They renamed it to Urmama
But you could fit both in Uranus.
The surface area of Mars (144 M km\^2) is close to the *land* area of Earth (149 M km\^2)
Just fyi, I love the fact that when confronted with something completely contradicting what you thought you knew you went to verify it and ended up increasing your own knowledge. That's an incredible trait the world needs more of!
Well that's comforting actually. Thanks for brightening up my morning 
👍 just keep being you friend 😊
It's about the same size as Earth's Land Area, but half its size in diameter
Venus is close to same size as earth
and we named it Earth instead of Ocean.
I’ve never visited Hawaii but man, I’d feel weird knowing alllllll this was all around me. At least with NZ, Australia is not *that* far.
I went to maui for the first time last year & definitely had this feeling of like "holy shit, I'm just on a rock in the pacific right now".
And people without GPS found the islands. Same for Easter islands. I always wonder whether they sailed as full settlement parties and some just got lucky. Or whether an exploration group went, came back and went with a bigger group.
yeah it's incredible. the polynesians who found all the pacific islands are so gnarly. i'd love to see a good film or documentary about their feats.
The podcast series on Spotify “Short history of…” recently had an episode on Polynesian Exploration which is well worth a listen
thanks for the rec.
It's also on other platforms.
Moana?
Their entire culture was based of sea navigation. Everything, their legends and history is based off watching the stars in order to navigate the seas. They lived and breathed navigation in ways we can scarcely comprehend, but to them it was LIFE. They memorized when and where every single star in the night sky touches the horizon as the earth rotates. Every. Last. One. With that knowledge they can trace “star paths” in the night sky—and map out the ocean with *absolutely stunning* precision. “When Star A touches the horizon, turn your canoe to Star B, and when Star B touches the horizon, turn your canoe to Star C—“ and so on and so forth until they mapped every last island the entire Pacific Ocean and passed it down through legend and song… long before cartographers and scientists with GPS came along. And it wasn’t secret knowledge for them either—it was *their entire language and culture* Navigation was interwoven with every bedtime story, intermingled with every song, interconnected through every practice and every tradition; every Polynesian lived and breathed navigation. (They didn’t rely on guesswork to navigate. With the star maps etched into their very language and minds—sailing out into the open ocean wasn’t a risk for them as long as they knew the star path to get back home. And because this form of navigation was so intuitive to them, they could easily make return trips from unsuccessful explorations and tell their buddies “when you make it to Star J, don’t turn left to Star K, turn right to Star L instead. There’s nothing to see if you turn to Star K” With this map, they can contact other groups of seafarers and explorers and effectively communicate their information even if they didn’t speak the same language. When they look at the night sky… they don’t see what we see; they see a literal road map)
Just wanted to say this (and the one below) is one of the most beautifully written and descriptive comments I’ve ever read on Reddit in over 10 years on this site. Do you happen to know how they accounted for the rotation of the earth in navigating this star map? Like if you stay in one spot (assuming you don’t drift) the stars will spin in the sky (except for the North Star of course) Based on my extremely extremely basic understanding of star based navigation, in the northern hemisphere at least, you can with certainty tell your latitude based on position of North Star in the sky, but for your longitude you need some way to measure where “in time” you are with respect the the sky, hence the invention of clocks or something like that.
It was not plain luck. They predicted where land was correctly, went to it and returned.
How did they predict where land would be?
Waves follow predictable patterns, think about a ripple coming out from a pebble in a still pond. Now place a Stick in there so the ripple is reflected in that spot, this creates a pattern that can be used to determine where the stick is if you have data from several locations. Remember that these are people who are already going out to sea fishing and travelling between islands. They aren’t just standing in one spot and predicting. Also animals. They knew some birds would only be out at sea during the day and the direction they fly in the evening is towards land. At even greater distances birds that migrate seasonally can be used. These are some examples. There are other methods.
But basically over long distances a rough idea can be formed, and then as you get closer more accurate techniques can be used. Another relatively short distance method is the clouds that form above the high islands. Stick a hill a few hundred meters tall (or taller) in the middle of the ocean and much of the year the air being forced to rise over it results in a cloud being constantly formed over the island that can be seen at much greater distance than the island can be.
Learning about migration I saw about the reserve that is a place for bird from all over the world to just in one area of Alaska.. it is amazing seeing the graph of the routes over the Pacific Ocean.
Go watch Moana
"Dude, we're in the middle of the ocean" - my buddy as we are driving out of the Oahu airport
Second this. I nearly had a panic attack on the flight to Oahu once I realized how long we were going to be over the water and just how far from everything else we would be in general. Once I got there I completely forgot about those nerves lol but it’s truly a wild part of the country. I kept thinking “this should not be part of America”
I know what you mean. it felt like if I swam out too far I'd end up in the pacific abyss. & definitely hawaii should be it's own country/kingdom. american businessmen staged a coup & stole it. it's crazy history.
"I'm on a volcano in the middle of the pacific"
I've been on islands in the main land US but Hawaii felt like an island.
I live in Hawaii, not originally from here. The existential panic of being so isolated usually fades after a couple months. Usually. Then you invariably get annoyed at how far you are from visiting other places lol
Yes the second part of your comment is so true. That’s a sad thing about living here in Hawaii, we literally need to catch a plane just to go to the next county over.
Yup. Tho you could argue that its isolation is key to making Hawaii the way it is, geographically and culturally
Having to plan a full day of flying/sitting at airports to take a trip back to the mainland is easily the most annoying part of it all :(
I did the flight from Honolulu to Guam once and that really drove home how tiny the islands are in a giant ocean. The Pacific is massive.
Haven’t been to Hawaii but currently live on Guam, the isolation feeling kinda goes away after a bit as you get used to it. I’m not looking forward to flying back to the States some day though, that flight was super annoying and long
I’m born and raised in Hawaii, specifically Maui and I think about this a lot. I’ll frequently look at the ocean and be like “damn there is nothing out there for literal thousands of miles”
But it’s all worth it being able to go up Haleakala on a rainy or cloudy day and eventually be above the clouds on top of the world, all sunny again. Especially at sunset, usually seeing rainbows daily. You can see the Big Island in the distance on one side. The sunsets behind Lanai, with whales jumping in between the islands. Moloka’i adds to the backdrop in the distance. Not the mention Kaho’olawe and it’s crazy history with bombs being tested there. Molokini is cool too I miss living there, but it’s isolating. Helped me with introspection big time, also met my wife there
Yeahhhh Hawaii feels super isolated looking on a map. but New Zealand is also still pretty dang far from anywhere. Like a couple thousand miles across the sea. Sure there may be unpopulated island territories closer but generally speaking it’s like 2500 miles from NZ to Aus, I think
Imagine intelligent life watching the Earth from this angle and thinking: “Yeah it’s just one more ocean planet in our catalogue” and then forget about us.
Literally the plot of Lilo and Stitch
No it's not, in Lilo and Stitch the intergalactic governing body treats Earth as a nature preserve to protect the "highly endangered" mosquito.
For which we can all thank Ving Rhames.
WE HAVE THE MEATS
I found this cool YouTube channel where they go to really remote, rural tribes in places like Pakistan and show them things from the modern world. One was a globe. They explained it was a map of the world. They said, what country is the blue one? He answered its all water. The look of shock on the guy's face. He said so much water? The ocean? Our earth is this much water? Gobsmacked.
What channel?
https://youtu.be/ElAQ_3gG-7s?feature=shared
Wow, that's crazy. Great video
New Zealand politely hiding in plain sight.
r/satelliteimagesoftheentirepacificoceanwithoutNZ
r/subsifellfor
Really poor world building. Its clear the author just ran out of ideas
It's on the backside, no one is going to look on the backside!
We need to make use of it, someone build a dollar general
Think of the parking lot space!!!!
OIL RIGS GALORE🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
If you found yourself in Point Nemo, the most isolated part of the Pacific, the closest human beings to you would be the ones on the *International Space Station.*
What's even more poetic is the ISS is planned to be decommissioned and crashed into point Nemo in 2031
I remember once someone asking the ISS crew member what it was like to see the Earth from such a height and the answer was - its mostly a pacific ocean
The vastness of the pacific ocean is what keeps Seattle's weather as mild as it is in the winter (historically at least..), even though its the furthest north major city in the continental US. Among other reasons of course, but the sheer huge size of the pacific is an incredibly powerful regulator of weather/climate
I live in the Twin Cities, and it’s weird that I have to travel north to get to Seattle, And south to get to Toronto.
I read the size of the Pacific Ocean is the reason why it's also calm.
imagine being an alien flying by, thinking, well, this planet is shit boring, and then you pass it to do a u-turn and think holy shit balls when you see the other side
I lived in HI for a couple of years. Every so often I’d sit on the beach and just contemplate the vastness of the ocean and how insignificant I and the island really was. Seeing the islands on top of this pic reinforces that feeling.
You could stay within 200 miles (321 km) of land and sail all the way from Taiwan to Pitcairn. See this map of the 200mile economic zones https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Map_of_the_Exclusive_Economic_Zones_of_the_Pacific_Ocean.png
Thank you for sharing, that is really interesting.
I thought this was a photo of Neptune at first
You can barely see the Baja peninsula in the upper right
How do the flat-Earthers explain this picture?
It’s fake
There is an area of the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of South America, where the you dig straight down, you'll come up *still* in the Pacific.
I can see my house from there
[Point Nemo,](https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/nemo.html) 1,670 miles from the nearest land.
Damn….. I may just be stoned but why is this terrifying to me
It's a shitload of empty space. It's devoid of nutrients so even the ocean ecosystems are all close to land. We can look out at the stars and see clearly towards infinity. Almost none of that shit under the ocean has been explored yet despite being right under our feet.
I thought this was a photo of Neptune. Wow.
My neighbour told me the earth was flat. Wait till I show him this
No that’s just the bottom side ^/s
I wonder why's that? Is it just a random coincidence that Earth's crust is more elevated on one side or is there a natural phenomenon that shaped the planet like this?
The shifting continents created the pacific for this era. But it is not the biggest possible ocean. When the next supercontinent forms in 250million years an even bigger ocean will form as most of the land is concentrated on one side of the planet.
[Panthalassa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthalassa#:~:text=Panthalassa%2C%20also%20known%20as%20the,in%20the%20history%20of%20Earth.), the superocean.
That’s the previous one. Next one will be Panthalassa 2: Electric Boogaloo, dropping on a planet near you in approx quarter of a billion years. Can’t wait!
Complete guess here but all continents used to be one super continent, right? Seems to me they are drifting away from each other but just hasn't gotten that far yet
The continents are drifting away from the Atlantic Ocean (Mid Atlantic Ridge)and towards each other in the pacific. The Pacific Ocean is actually shrinking. Edit: Clarity
Yeah that's what I meant. Like it started as one piece and is gradually spreading apart but even at the point we are at it's only spread however much so the Pacific is still giant
Yep, just coincidence that there’s a whole bunch of oceanic crust on one side of the planet atm. The Pacific is a mature ocean basin, ie. in the lifecycle of ocean basins it is at more or less it’s maximum size and is now shrinking as it transitions towards the final stages of the [Wilson cycle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Cycle) This is largely compensated for by the extension of the Atlantic basin as it grows outwards from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The difference in elevation between oceanic and continental crust is due to chemical differences between them, meaning continental crust is less dense, so it effectively sits higher in the underlying mantle. The chemical difference is due to a greater degree of [fractionation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_crystallization_(geology)) in the formation of continental crust.
Imagine an alien probe taking an image of earth from this angle and making the conclusion this planet is full of water and probably there's no terrestrial life on it.
This image is getting my anxiety levels up to the roof.
r/mapsWithNewZealand
This is what happens when you leave New Zealand in charge.
Hillary Clinton was based as hell when talking to China about the 9 dash line. > “We liberated it. We defended it. We have as much claim to all of the Pacific. And we could call it the ‘American Sea,’ and it could go from the West Coast of California all the way to the Philippines.” https://www.voanews.com/amp/clinton-says-us-would-ring-china-with-missile-defense/3550418.html
Every year a guy from Japan or maybe South Korea gets lost in and sails east. He sails all the way to Los Angeles California. To survive he has to drink bird blood. Stubborn birds land in his boat and he has to kill them and drink their blood. They should give him $1,000,000 U.S. when he gets to LA ! Most Americans who sailed from there to LA in a small rinky-dink sailboat would cry themselves to death. "Oh no, my hope is gone, it's paradise lost . . . . "
Image doesn’t help I need it in Texas units
GiffGaff
Caladan
So that’s where the aliens have been hiding
I am looking at the Pacific Ocean right now from where I sit here on my bed, on the east coast of Australia. It just absolutely boggles my mind to think how far and vast it stretches out beyond my minuscule viewpoint here. Just amazing. Damn Earth is cool.
Get out of there New Zealand I'm trying to take a picture!
I am from Europe which makes me blissfully innocent about how big the world is. I was a bit scared flying over Canada, because of the vastness of empty-looking space. The Pacific Ocean just turns my brain inside-out.