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Imagine the Earth as a perfect hollow sphere. Call the place where you are on its surface, point A. There is only one place where a line segment that equals the sphere's diameter, or the Earth's diameter in this case, could be located on the opposite side. What's is the name of that opposite point furthest from me? ans:Antipode

I am looking for a word which specifies "nearly at the ellipsoid opposite side of the earth", by which I mean, given a beam that is perpendicular to earth surface at a given first location, and the second location that this beam crosses earth on the other end, what is a word that specifies a place that is near the second location?

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  • Add a drawing please?
    – mplungjan
    Dec 16, 2013 at 13:28
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    @mplungjan You gave the answer I was expecting and the drawings on their site are much better than the ones I could produce at the moment so I'm just going to refrain from trying to draw a ball and a beam going through it in gimp :-)
    – nurettin
    Dec 16, 2013 at 13:45
  • Helpful website at proximitycast.com/tools/AntipodeCalculator.php . At Wolfram Alpha, you may type in the name of a city (e.g., wolframalpha.com/input/?i=buenos+aires&lk=4&num=1), and it will give you coordinates. To find the antipode, flip the N/S on latitude and add or subtract 180 and flip the longitude between E and W. You can also ask Wolfram Alpha for the city at that site (which most often will be ocean).
    – rajah9
    Dec 16, 2013 at 15:52

1 Answer 1

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Antipodes comes to mind

Wikipedia - antipodes

Two points that are antipodal to each other are connected by a straight line running through the centre of the Earth.

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The antipodes of any place on the Earth is the place that is diametrically opposite it, so a line drawn from the one to the other passes through the centre of the Earth and forms a true diameter. For example, the antipodes of New Zealand's lower North Island lies in Spain. Most of the Earth's land surfaces have ocean at their antipodes, this being a consequence of most land being in the land hemisphere.

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  • There seems to be a slight anomaly, though. In the sense of the region on the Earth's surface which is diametrically opposite to another region, the term is Antipodes, singular, with the trailing s, but some dictionaries list antipode as singular and antipodes as plural. Cf. 'The antipodes of any place on the Earth is the place ...' above.
    – Kris
    Dec 16, 2013 at 14:16
  • Fixed. I got the singular via antipodean. so one antipode, two antipodes sounded logical - I always assumed that the plural came from the two places that are each other's antipode
    – mplungjan
    Dec 16, 2013 at 14:18
  • Sure. I just still assumed the SET of TWO points were the antipodes :)
    – mplungjan
    Dec 16, 2013 at 14:34
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    Compare: an·tip·o·des (n-tp-dz) pl.n. 1. Any two places or regions that are on diametrically opposite sides of the earth. TFD thefreedictionary.com/antipodes --> In geography, the term is antipodes sing., I believe.
    – Kris
    Dec 16, 2013 at 14:45
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    Wiktionary notes that "antipodes" is is a plural-only word, like "scissors" or "pants".
    – SevenSidedDie
    Dec 16, 2013 at 21:32

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