Where Is Point Nemo?
Season One: Episode Four: Where Is Point Nemo?
Released: August 8, 2023
Transcript:
**Upbeat Music** Welcome to Hyperfixing with Cate. I’m your host, Cate North. Join me today as we dive into yet another amazing hyperfixation. **Upbeat Music**
Well hello there, hi and welcome to Hyperfixing with Cate North. I am your host, Cate.
I'm so happy to have you back and welcome you if it's your first time here. Today's episode, I suspect, will be one that gets you all revved up and then horribly let down. One this is a new fixation for me and two it seems that none of the right kind of people have fixated on it enough to give us the extra information we all know we deserve.
So where did this new topic come from? I think you all know where. Where else would I do my research but on tiktok. Let's pause for a second. Have you ever heard the phrase, if you think you're stupid you're actually really smart? How does this make you feel? It makes me think that people don't know what they're talking about. Another side tangent, I was once applying for a job that required you to take a test in excel. They asked if I thought I was proficient and I replied, I know basic stuff but that's about it. Well apparently I aced the test and they asked me why I had said that I had only basic knowledge. They have people touting they are experts and they fail miserably. I replied that there are a ton of functions and formulas I don't know how to do. They decided that I was smart enough to know there was a lot I didn't know. Kind of feels like a backhanded compliment but also feels kind of like the other saying. So where am I going with this…honestly I don't know. It felt like I was going somewhere with that. I think I was thinking, there are certain things that I "know" but can't comprehend. For example I know that there are micro colonies living on my skin and it would take 4 light years to reach the closest star besides our sun. I know these things, and yet I can't comprehend them. They don't seem possible, they feel uncomfortable thinking about and my brain can't wrap around them.
So back to researching on tiktok, I came across a tiktok that seemed so absurd that I had to find out more. There is a spot on earth, that if you were to go there, the next closest person to you would be on the international space station. This blows my mind and I cannot wrap my head around it. Space is super freaking far away and yet our planet is big enough that you can go to a place where people in space are closer to you than people on the nearest land. This is a concept that I cannot wrap my brain around.
I looked this up and it is in fact true and the spot has been named Point Nemo. Now as cool as this seems and all that we want to know more about this we will find ourselves with a serious lack of information. According to (and I’m going to butcher this pronunciation) https://escales.ponant.com/en/point-nemo/
"The oceanic pole of inaccessibility was officially discovered, through a process of deduction, in 1992, and hasn’t really been explored since."
So what is Point Nemo? Point Nemo, also called the oceanic pole of inaccessibility, is part of the South Pacific Ocean. And it’s actually pretty large. Apparently it is about 34 times larger than France. The actual coordinates of Point Nemo are 48 degrees, 52.6 feet south latitude and 123 degrees 23.6 feet west longitude. In a pathetic attempt to make us realize how big and far away from land this spot is. Again, another concept I can’t wrap my brain around. The nearest land masses are about 2700 km away, slightly less…in all directions. (Again, I apologize for the butchering of these pronunciations.) If you travel north you will eventually reach Ducie Island in the Pitcairn Islands. If you travel south, you will eventually hit Maher Island in Antarctica. If you travel northwest, you will run into the islet of Motu Nui by Easter Island but if you feel so inclined to travel simply west you would have to wait to reach Chatham Island in New Zealand and if you wanted to go east you would have to travel all the way to Chile…but if you felt like traveling to space you would only have to travel about 416 kms to the international space station, almost eight times shorter of a distance. So what direction are you headed?
Side note, to wet your whistle a little more, there are actually several poles of inaccessibility. There’s the northern pole of inaccessibility, the Southern pole of inaccessibility, Oceanic pole (or Point Nemo) and the continental poles of inaccessibility with one each in Eurasia, Africa, North America, South America, and Australia. To be a pole of inaccessibility, you have to be the most challenging to reach. This often equates to the furthest location from the coastline. Quote: a pole of inaccessibility can be defined as the center of the largest circle that can be drawn within an area of interest without encountering a coast. Where a coast is imprecisely defined, the pole will be similarly imprecise” end quote.
So,back to Nemo with all that, why haven’t we explored it? Well, again according to Ponant, quote: its remoteness and weak ocean currents mean there are not enough nutrients in the water for more developed, larger wildlife to survive" end quote. But don't they know how silly that sounds? Literally (according to me and maybe some others) everything about life is miraculous and defeats logic. Why on earth would they assume they know what to expect? It kind of reminds me of the conspiracy theory that NASA used to study the ocean and then suddenly started to study how to get off earth. What exactly is down there that they don't want us to know about?? Hmm?
So, we decided we didn’t want to study this area, lame. Clearly that means there’s nothing else special about this place. Well, that’s not actually true. It turns out that “space agencies” were like, oh pick me, pick me. I know what we can do or use this place for. They actually use it to calculate a re-entry point during the “de-orbiting” process. It turns out that Point Nemo is a graveyard of sorts. They send decommissioned spacecraft here. This is where the Russian Space Station, Mir, was decommissioned and is expected to be the resting place of the ISS when it has to be dismantled or reconfigured in 2024. Apparently they chose this spot because it would quote “ensure the debris generated by it’s reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere didn’t cause damage on land.” End quote
So last but not least, how did Point Nemo get its name? Well, I can assure you it wasn’t because of the Disney classic, Finding Nemo. It was actually because of Jules Verne’s novel 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea’s main character Captain Nemo. Apparently Nemo is cleverly used because Nemo means No One and the character himself was a little antisocial and generally shunned the company of others. And if you don’t want to be around people, where else would you go but to the furthest place away from other human beings?
And thus, this concludes pretty much all of the information I could find on Point Nemo. I hope you enjoyed it. I will definitely include some links in the show notes as a lot of this information I took almost directly from the websites I used. I personally want to know more about what is in the waters of point Nemo, I need some pictures, some ghost stories, just some more information. I need the truth on why we don’t want to explore it more.
I hope you enjoyed this rendition on my hyperfixation. And until next time friends.
**Upbeat Music** Thank you for joining me today on Hyperfixing with Cate. I hope to see you again next week where we explore the delectable world of yet another hyperfixation. If you enjoyed today’s show I would love it if you subscribed to the podcast. Don’t forget to check out the links and resources in the show notes. Today’s music was brought to you by Sound Gallery by Dimitri Taras. And until next time don’t forget to keep your heart and mind open. **Upbeat Music**
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