by Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question that you want to answer an expert, send it to curiouskidsus@thevversation.com.
Do people in the South Pole walk upside down from the rest of the world? – Ralph P., USA
When I stood in the South Pole, I felt in the same way as I feel somewhere on earth because my feet were still on the floor and the sky was still above my head.
I am an astrophysicist from Wisconsin who lived in the South Pole for seven weeks from December 2024 to January 2025 to work on a range of detectors looking for extremely high energy particles from the room.
I did not feel upside down, but there were some differences that the South Pole still felt for transferring what I was used to.
As someone who likes to look for the moon, I noticed that the man’s face was turned around on the moon, as if he went from 🙂 to 🙃. All the craters that I was used to at the top of the Moon from Wisconsin were now at the bottom – because I looked at the moon from the southern hemisphere instead of the northern hemisphere.
After I noticed this difference, I remembered something similar in the nocturnal heaven of New Zealand, a country near Antarctica where my fellow travelers and I got our big red coats who kept us warm at the South Pole. I had searched for Orion, a constellation that is seen in the northern hemisphere as a hunter holding a bow and pulled an arrow out of his arrow cooker. In the nocturnal heaven of New Zealand, Orion looked like he was doing a handstand.
Everything in the sky felt upside down and the opposite, compared to what I was used to. A person who lives in the southern hemisphere can feel the same about visiting the Arctic area or the North Pole.
A non-the world perspective
To understand what is happening, and why things are really different, but also feel a lot the same, it can be useful to make a bit of a backup of the earth’s surface. Like in the room. On space emissions to the moon, astronauts could see one side of the ball of the earth in one go.
If they had superhero vision, an astronaut would see the people in the South Pole and the North Pole that are upside down. And a person at the equator would look like he was standing straight from the side of the planet. Although they may be on the equator, people in Colombia and Indonesia would also look like they were upset because they would protrude from the earth from the earth.
Of course, if you ask every person, they would say, “My feet are on the floor and the sky is up.”
That is because the earth is essentially a really large ball whose gravity points to each of us to the center of the planet. The direction in which the earth attracts us is what people call the planet ‘down’. Consider holding a baseball between your pointer fingers. From the perspective of your fingertips on the surface of the ball, both point ‘down’. But from the perspective of a friend in the neighborhood, your fingers show in different directions – although always to the center of the ball.
However, these relationships between people on the earth’s surface are good for a little pleasure. While I was in the South Pole, I focused my body in the same direction as my friends in Wisconsin – by doing a handstand. But if you look at the photo the other way around, it seems that I keep the entire planet up, such as Superman.
This is the right way up: Abigail Bishop does a handstand at the ceremonial South Pole. Abigail Bisschop
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This article is re -published of the conversation, a non -profit, independent news organization that gives you facts and reliable analysis to help you understand our complex world. It is written by: Abigail Bishop, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Abigail Bishop receives financing from the National Science Foundation Award 2013134 and has received financing from the Belgian American Education Foundation.
