If you could dig a hole straight down through the centre of the Earth, where would you come out? From Spain you would reach New Zealand, from Shanghai or Hong Kong northern Argentina, and from Honolulu the Kalahari in Botswana. From almost all of the United States, Canada and Europe you would surface in the open ocean, mostly the southern Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. Search for a town, paste coordinates or click anywhere on the map, and the tool marks your point in green and its antipode in orange. The panel shows the antipode's coordinates with a copy button, whether each point is on land or at sea, the country, the nearest town with at least 15,000 inhabitants, the distance over the surface and the length of the tunnel straight through the Earth. The orange overlay shows every continent flipped to the other side of the planet, so you can see at a glance which places have land beneath their feet on the far side. Go to the antipode to look at it up close, swap the two points, or download both as GeoJSON or KML for Google Earth. The share link keeps the point.
How to use it
- Search for a town, paste coordinates, use your location or click anywhere on the map.
- Read the antipode in the panel, with its coordinates, the land or sea it falls in and the nearest town.
- Press "Go to the antipode" to zoom in on it, or "Swap" to make the antipode your new point.
- Copy the coordinates, download GeoJSON or KML, or copy the share link.
How accurate is it?
How the antipode is calculated
The antipode of latitude φ and longitude λ is latitude −φ and longitude λ ± 180°. This is not an approximation of a round Earth: the WGS84 ellipsoid that GPS uses is symmetric about its centre, so the straight line through the centre from any point on its surface comes out at exactly that point on the other side. The coordinates are therefore as exact as the ones you enter. Heights are ignored, since a mountain and the sea floor under it share the same antipode in latitude and longitude.
Land, sea and country
Whether a point is on land, and in which country, is read from the Natural Earth country outlines at a scale of 1:50 million, simplified to a few kilometres. Inland it is reliable, but within a few kilometres of a coast, on small islands and at disputed borders the answer can be wrong, so zoom in on the map before you rely on it. Lakes count as land, and Antarctica counts as land including its ice shelves.
Distances
The shortest way over the surface to your antipode is always half a meridian: 20,003.93 km on the WGS84 ellipsoid, calculated with GeographicLib. Every direction is about equally short on a sphere; on the flattened Earth the route over the poles is the shortest, which is why the distance does not depend on where you start. The tunnel through the Earth is twice your distance from the centre: 12,756.3 km from the equator and 12,713.5 km from a pole.
Good to know
The map stretches the overlay
Web Mercator enlarges land far from the equator, and the flipped continents are stretched in the same way, so Antarctica flipped onto the Arctic looks huge and is cut off at 85°. Compare shapes near the equator, and trust the panel rather than the drawing near the poles.
Antipodes are rarely land on both sides
Measured with the same outlines, only about 13–15 % of all land has land at its antipode, roughly 4 % of the Earth's surface. The rest of the land lies opposite the ocean, mainly because the Pacific is so big. If your antipode is at sea, the nearest town in the panel is often more than a thousand kilometres away.
The Antipodes Islands
The Antipodes Islands south-east of New Zealand were named because they lie close to the antipode of London. They are only about 20 km² and too small for a world map at this scale, so a point there may be shown as sea; zoom in on the background map to see them.
Frequently asked questions
What is on the other side of the world from me?
Press "Use my location" or search for your town. The orange point is your antipode, and the panel says which country or sea it is in and how far away the nearest town is.
If I dig a hole straight down from the United States, do I reach China?
No. China's antipode is Argentina and Chile. From the contiguous United States you would come out in the southern Indian Ocean, south-west of Australia; from Hawaii you would reach southern Africa.
Which countries are antipodes of each other?
The best-known pairs are Spain and Portugal with New Zealand, China and Taiwan with Argentina, Chile and Paraguay, Indonesia with Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, and the Philippines with Brazil. Turn on the flipped land and look for places where green land and the orange overlay meet.
How long would a tunnel through the Earth be?
Between 12,713 and 12,756 km, depending on your latitude, because the Earth is flattened at the poles. The panel shows the exact figure for your point.
What is the antipode of the North Pole?
The South Pole. For any point, the antipode has the same latitude with the opposite sign and a longitude 180° away, so the poles are each other's antipodes.
Something wrong or missing? E-mail [email protected] and it will be fixed.