I’m not sure why, but I find it comforting sometimes to think about the vastness of the universe and our own general insignificance when one thinks about that very vastness. And here’s the thing: you don’t even have to think about gigantic voids in space so huge that it takes light millions of years to cross it. We like to think that our own Earth is small, “it’s a small world after all”, and that our home in the universe is tiny. Which, I suppose, it is.
But compared to us? This world is still pretty gigantic and contains places that make us look individually like the tiniest of fleas on the largest mammal.
Consider a place called Point Nemo. This has been a particular fascination of mine of late (I even linked a piece about it last fall). It’s a spot in the southern Pacific that is the single point on Earth where you are farthest from any land mass at all.
Such places are called “poles of inaccessibility”. There are such poles on land as well–spots where you are farthest from any ocean, for example–but Point Nemo is the planet’s Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility. Point Nemo’s three nearest land masses–each islands in either the Pacific or off the coast of Antartica–all lie about 1,670 miles away. And not only is Point Nemo that far from human habitation (though at times there are humans within a few hundred miles of Point Nemo, whenever the International Space Station’s orbit takes it over the area), but Point Nemo is pretty much that far from life at all. Because of its distance from land and the ocean currents that surround it, the water there–all 13,000 feet deep of it–has virtually no nutrient content, and thus there is almost nothing living beneath the surface.
Because of that depth and the remote location, the region surrounding Point Nemo is generally the target area for satellites and spacecraft that have been abandoned and allowed to crash back to the planet.
I don’t know if it’s the times we’re living in, but where the idea of being stranded in a place like Point Nemo is genuinely terrifying, I also find it strangely comforting to remember that human concerns are still very small in comparison not just to the entire universe, but to this little planet of ours.
Here’s a video about an expedition to Point Nemo. Why go to such a place? I suppose for the same basic reason one climbs a mountain: because it’s there.
