Starship Asterisk*

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080907.html

Capturing meteorites in Antarctic:


http://geology.cwru.edu/~ansmet/meteorites/index.html

I love it!

APOD wrote:in East Antarctica, huge sheets of blue ice remain pure and barren

Okay, East Antarctica (the right side of this map) does occupy roughly the portion of Antarctica that is in the Eastern Hemisphere.

But East Antarctica still seems like a strange term to me. Even though its coast is deeply dented, Antarctica surrounds the South Pole. If I pick a spot and head East, I find no spot that is furthest East except as measured from an arbitrary Prime Meridian - I just keep going and going. Sort of like trying to be the first explorer to discover the East end of the Equator.

apodman wrote:But East Antarctica still seems like a strange term to me.

Do you have another suggestion? Seems to me that reasonable cardinal directions for Antarctica are east, west, central/south, and coastal/north.

Even though its coast is deeply dented, Antarctica surrounds the South Pole. If I pick a spot and head East, I find no spot that is furthest East except as measured from an arbitrary Prime Meridian - I just keep going and going.

How is that different from any other point on the Earth? By definition, east means spinward. That works no matter where you are, except exactly on the poles.

There are two different usages here. East Antarctica is the region of the continent that lies in the Eastern Hemisphere, and walking east means walking spinward.

Chris Peterson wrote:

apodman wrote:But East Antarctica still seems like a strange term to me.

Do you have another suggestion? ... There are two different usages here. East Antarctica is the region of the continent that lies in the Eastern Hemisphere, and walking east means walking spinward.

Hey, I only said strange ... not offended, nor outraged, nor feeling the need to replace any terminology. Just playing with the difference between the usages. Personally, I live on the East coast of a continent that actually has an East coast, and therefore I think of the Eastern U.S. as the part adjoining the East coast. My little mind (not my real mind, just pretending for fun) has trouble conceptualizing an Eastern region of a continent that does not have an East coast to adjoin. Funny, huh?

apodman wrote:Hey, I only said strange ... not offended, nor outraged, nor feeling the need to replace any terminology.

I didn't take it wrong, but was serious if you had an alternate terminology in mind. The 2D coordinate system we find generally convenient to describe our position on the surface of a sphere does go to hell at the poles. Reminds me of that old puzzle about walking a mile south, a mile east, and a mile north, bringing you back to your starting point... what color is the bear you see?

As an astronomer, I see the same thing happen in the sky. If I've got my scope pointed near a pole, I can spin one axis through 360° and see hardly any change in where I'm pointing. Similarly, I can just jog the scope a few arcminutes and have one of the coordinates jump all over the place. Whether you are a navigator on the Earth, near the poles with an equatorial telescope, or near the zenith with an altaz telescope, there are points which are singularities with a 2D coordinate system mapping a non-Euclidian plane.

My personal coordinate system is also affected by singularities. If I stand in the middle of a field with stars down to every horizon, I remain well oriented as long as I pan along a horizontal strip at a low or medium angle of altitude; if I tilt my neck backward to observe near the zenith, just turning my feet a little will disorient me totally. I have a Mercator brain with Polar insets, and a unified view escapes my grasp.

neufer wrote:http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080907.html

Capturing meteorites in Antarctic:

http://geology.cwru.edu/~ansmet/meteorites/index.html

Wow. Posing for gag pictures in Antarctica...nerds.

iamlucky13 wrote:

neufer wrote:http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080907.html
Capturing meteorites in Antarctic:
http://geology.cwru.edu/~ansmet/meteorites/index.html

Wow. Posing for gag pictures in Antarctica...nerds.

<<What do you do if you try and try, and the meteorites just don't seem to ever be in your path?
Well, you appeal to the gods, of course.
Here we see RPH performing his famous meteorite dance to convince the gods to deliver:


What if the solo meteorite dance doesn't work? You get more folks involved, of course.
In this image Dr. Thomas Meisel takes his turn in the square as the dance grows in intensity.
He found a 3-ton meteorite later that day:>>

Yeah,
It seems to me like from the South Pole all directions are North. But considering that the Americas are considered West and Africa/India are considered East, then the Eastern part of Antarctica should be that portion south of South Africa/India.

So if the South American section is Western Antarctica and the African/Indian section is Eastern Antarctica, what is the Austrailian section?

BMAONE23 wrote:Yeah,
It seems to me like from the South Pole all directions are North.

And so they are. But there's an awful lot of the continent of Antarctica that is nowhere near the South Pole. In terms of distance to the Pole, most of Antarctica is similar to Siberia, northern Canada, or Greenland. People in those places don't seem to have a problem with directions.

So if the South American section is Western Antarctica and the African/Indian section is Eastern Antarctica, what is the Austrailian section?

Australia claims most of Eastern Antarctica.

True but ALL land masses in the Northern Hemisphere contain an orientation that allows for all 4 directions to apply
for example northern/southern/eastern/western Greenland/Siberia/Canada but the polar ocean (ice pack) doesn't have an east or west http://www.bugbog.com/maps/polar_region ... e_map.html
There is a larger ammount of land mass that crosses north of the Arctic Circle from southern land masses than there is of the Antarctic land mass that crosses north of the Antarctic circle http://www.bugbog.com/maps/polar_region ... e_map.html

But in terms of reference there isn't a proper east or west portion of a continent that covers the south pole only the half (+/-) that lies in the eastern hemisphere and the half that lies in the western hemisphere.

BMAONE23 wrote:But in terms of reference there isn't a proper east or west portion of a continent that covers the south pole only the half (+/-) that lies in the eastern hemisphere and the half that lies in the western hemisphere.

Exactly. And that's how the continent is divided. As noted previously, there are two ways of using directions. There is the simple navigation use, which is just N, S, E, and W like anywhere else ("Hey Joe, I think that's a meteorite over to the north of you.") There's also the cartographic convention of Western Antarctica and Eastern Antarctica, as determined by which hemisphere they lie in. Makes sense- not unlike talking about the West Coast and East Coast of the United States.

To make things more simple, I think we should swap north with east and south with west... that way our map orientation would coordinate with the rising and setting sun which in turn would correlate with our psychological states. Then when we say “things have gone south”, we won’t be insulting Antarctica but more aptly referencing the dark side of things.

The problem will be re-labeling all those magnets at Fermi and CERN

emc wrote:To make things more simple, I think we should swap north with east and south with west.

I went to school in a snowy town where they never plowed. Legend had it that after a warm season the mayor declared the Earth's axis had shifted, we were now in the tropics, and he sold the plows. Are you related?

apodman wrote:

emc wrote:To make things more simple, I think we should swap north with east and south with west.

I went to school in a snowy town where they never plowed. Legend had it that after a warm season the mayor declared the Earth's axis had shifted, we were now in the tropics, and he sold the plows. Are you related?

I never heard of the man.

BTW - I have a map sale going on today with Washington state positioned “way down south”.

Say, maybe you could sell some of them meaty ore capturing nets.