Finding Nemo: Pole of Inaccessibility

Very often we think to get away from all these chaos life has offering everyday. When the stress of every day life pushes us, we for the most of the time think “yar ess sabse dur chala jata/jati hu”, thinking to search for most remote place on the globe. Where do you get away from it all? You won’t believe but there are actually few places available to enjoy your aloneness (if you ever reached there).

So if you ever have this kind of getting away thought, there’s a one place, “Point Nemo”, the world’s most lonely place, regarded as hardest to reach location on planet Earth. It’s the farthest point from land, also known as the “oceanic pole of Inaccessibility”. You can’t get farther away from land than ‘Point Nemo’.

It’s named after author Jules Verne’s famous seafaring villain Captain Nemo. The name means ‘no-one’ in Latin, which is best suitable for a such rarely visited place by people. Point nemo isn’t actually a piece of land. Actually it’s an invisible spot in the vast Pacific (southern) ocean, farthest from land in any possible direction.

Now you may be wondering just how far it is. It’s pretty far from anywhere else. To be precise, it is 2,688 Km away in every direction. Ducie Island is to the North, Motu Nui( of Eastern Island chain) to the north-east and Maher island of Antarctica is to the south. If you’ve ever got to decide, please choose heading for the Easter islands. Ducie and Antarctica has non-inhabited stretch of rock about 2Km long.

In this loneliness, the nearest humans you could find are often astronauts. They are orbiting aboard the International Space Station at a maximum distance of 416Km. In fact whole region around Point Nemo is well known to space agencies. Don’t forget to give them a hi-fi, ironically they will be the only closest neighbors in that ‘Isolated’ area.

You can guess from this just how Vast Pacific ocean is! As mentioned above, this place is very well known to space agencies. The agencies are using it as a dumping ground, because of no human inhabitants and quietest shipping routes. Over hundred of decommissioned spacecraft now occupy this “spacecraft cemetery” which lies 4km below the ocean’s surface. From satellites, rocket debris to defunct space stations like Mir and recently Tiangong-1 are plunged into it.

“Point Nemo” or the “oceanic pole of Inaccessibility” was discovered by survey engineer Hrvoje Lukatela in 1992. He discovered this by not visiting the place, but by calculating its position using computer software. There are no other points on the Earth’s surface that could conceivably replace any one of the three equilateral points that could place Point Nemo. There is possibility of shifting of point due to coastal erosion or better measurements but only in the order of meters, says Lukatela.

You can go there, if that’s your thing. Hit these digits into your GPS [45°52.6S, 123°23.6W] and start your journey by sailing and remember, once you’re there, you’ve got just as far to go to get back to land. And one thing, don’t forget to wave hello to the guys in space!