Nueva Antártica

Mapa de la Antártica después que los hielos de los polos se hayan deshecho por completo

living Antarctica

beyond the south

If you just have a look to the previous post "looking south" you can find interesting geographic notions about the countries that have direct connection to Antarctica through the oceans, just going southward.
That's already quite interesting for someone interested in geo-stuffs, but what about the connections between countries beyond the south pole, that is, crossing Antarctica?

That's even more interesting!
And it's also something that captain Shackleton studied very well, for sure!
I mean, that's something that's generally difficult to visualise in an intuitive way when you look at a conventional two-dimensional map of the world: in almost all the typical world map representations the north-pole and the south-pole are open and deformed into the top edge and the bottom edge of the map.
But in reality these edges are just two points that you can cross when you follow a north (or south) perfect line. And what's beyond this point? Back to the world map! A anti-intuitive connection is now linking two countries that appear very far in the world map!

The south-pointing-line that we drew starting from an aleatory shore point in a casual country of the world, is going down in the map until it touches the bottom edge of the map, and it pops up again from another point of the map, this time going northward, and finally touching another shore line of another country.

And which country is in connection with which other country?
That can be quite interesting, indeed: for example, did you know that starting from almost every Indian shore and going south, crossing the south-pole and going straight forward you'll reach Mexico?
Here you have the southern-connection map of the world! Have a look it's interesting!

Sometimes the connections are so anti-intuitive that maybe it could be better using another map to better understand how these connections are possible.
If you look at the following map (that's simply a deformation of the previous one) you'll easily understand how these countries are connected beyond the south pole.
Enjoy the trip!

looking south

Poor Antarctica continent!
Always forgotten, sometimes it even doesn't appear in the conventional maps of the world...
And when it's there, below all the other continents... it's such a strange shape... a broken white stripe crossing all the bottom of the image.
We all know that Antarctica is not a stripe: it's instead a sort of circle with a long tentacle almost reaching South America.
But when we look at a map of Antarctica, with its real shape, we generally lose all the references with the rest of the world! where's Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania? We generally have just the reference of South America, due to its proximity to the Antarctic Peninsula.

So... which lands face Antarctica's shores?
That's an interesting question, that can be turned upside down in this way: which coasts look directly to Antarctica when they point southwards? ...and of which countries?

Here you have the answer finally!
It's an answer that helps us to better understand the relative position of Antarctica inside our planets!

So, did you noticed that Mexico is one of the countries that faces the most to Antarctica when someone looks southwards from its west shores?
Also Denmark (Greenland, indeed) and Iceland have their own shores directly connected to the most-southern-continent on Earth.
And also France, but this is just thanks to its colonies around the world.

Here you have a more global map showing the world connections of Antarctica:

Or if you prefer a more conventional way to represent our planet, we can say the same thing this way:

sketches about Shakleton

these sketches are taken a long time ago during an exposition about Shakleton, the explorer of Antarctica.

el mundo es un toro

si miramos la continuidad de las tierras en nuestro planeta podemos ver que siempre todos los continentes casi se unen el uno al otro por estrechos marítimos muy angostos: África toca a Asia en Suez y casi toca Europa en Gibraltar. Eurasia (que es una sola tierra) casi se une a América del Norte en el estrecho de Bering, las dos Américas se unen con la sutil franja de tierra de Panamá y casi tocan a Antártica por medio de las islas del estrecho de Magallanes. la que más se aleja de todos es Australia, pero siguiendo la cadena de islas de Indonesia y Nueva Guinea, casi unidas las unas a las otras, Asia y Oceanía casi se tocan a través del estrecho de Torres o al de Malaca, depende de como se mire.

así que las tierras terrestres son casi un continuo.
a través de la representación de una proyección Dymaxion del planeta Tierra se llega a esneñarlo muy bien.
Así que la continuidad de las tierras en nuestro planeta sería algo de este tipo:

este tipo de forma es de alguna manera la forma de (todas) las tierras de nuestro planeta representadas en su unidad.
y pues, es una forma, no? una forma casi como si única. definida. y de alguna manera nueva, porqué se ve poco a menudo este tipo de representación.
así que si de verdad consideramos unir todas los continentes en sus puntos de casi-unión, tenemos una silueta única.

y que sugiere esta forma de todas las tierras del planeta?
pues... a mi...
un Toro!
un toro minoico!
queréis ver como? aquí va:

pues ya veis, estamos viviendo encima de un toro bravo y fuerte!
Australia son las pezuñas de las patas de delante, Antártica son las pezuñas de las patas de detrás.
América del Sur los muslos, América del Norte el vientre del animal. Eurasia sería el pecho fuerte de la bestia y África la cabeza con los cuernos.
qué decir, un animal formidable!
el mundo es un toro!
un toro minoico!