Written by Andrew Littlefield, Design by Martin Flores
Point Nemo is the most isolated place on the planet.
But for a spot known for nothingness, there sure is a lot going on…
You’ve flown for over 11 hours, but thanks to the International Date Line, you arrive four hours before you took-off.
11 hours. That’s a long flight. All told, you’ll cover 6,564 miles, 10,564 kilometers, and 10 time zones. You’d better bring a good book and download a movie or two, because looking out the window won’t provide much in the way of sightseeing: the journey is almost entirely across endless acres of Pacific Ocean nothingness.
But halfway through that nothingness, you’ll cross over the most isolated point on Earth.
As you fly through the air at 39,000 feet over the far southern Pacific, you’ll cross over Point Nemo: the most isolated place on Earth.
There’s nothing to see at Point Nemo—which is entirely the point. Surrounding this pinpoint of GPS coordinates is 9 million square miles of ocean, and nothing else. It is the absolute furthest point from any land you can possibly be on this planet.
one-way ticket aboard Air New Zealand Flight 30 will set you back about $750. It’s an overnight flight of sorts—you leave Auckland, New Zealand in the evening and arrive in Buenos Aires, Argentina in the late afternoon, but of the same day that you left.
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It’s difficult to convey in words just how isolated Point Nemo—also known as the “oceanic pole of inaccessibility”—really is. It sits at the center of a space so vast, our minds fail to grasp the magnitude of it all. That might be what makes it such an appealing location for fictional work: author H.P. Lovecraft used it as the earthly home of the monster Cthulhu, while the narrative-heavy band Gorillaz cite Point Nemo as their former home and studio location.
Indescribable Nothingness
The maps we grow up with (understandably) place more emphasis on land masses than our sizeable oceans. But the mighty Pacific takes up nearly an entire half of the globe, with very little in between the Americas and east Asia.
That’s doubly true for the expanse between Oceania and South America, where islands are scarce, and even the ones that are there aren’t exactly tropical oases.
The far South Pacific is generally an inhospitable place—if you happened to find yourself floating around Point Nemo, you likely won’t feel like staying very long. Water temperatures average around 45 degrees Fahrenheit. The ocean floor is a full 13,000 feet below the surface—2.5 miles straight down.
The nearest land is a great deal further—1,670 miles, to be exact. Even then, your choices aren’t inviting. To the North you’ll find Ducie Island, a tiny, uninhabited atoll featuring just 0.27 square miles of land. To the South is Maher Island—another small and uninhabited island off the coast of Antarctica. Your best bet is to head Northeast, towards Easter Island—still one of the most isolated inhabited islands in the world. In fact if islands aren’t really your bag, you’ll have to travel nearly 2,100 miles just to reach the Chilean coast—or head back another 3,000 miles to New Zealand.
In fact, were you to find yourself bobbing in the waters of Point Nemo and desperate for a conversation, the closest human being to you would likely be the astronauts on the International Space Station, floating by just out of reach 249 miles above your head.
Point Nemo isn’t just remote for humans—its location makes it fairly devoid of any animal life. Oceanographer Steven D’Hondt goes as far as to call it “the deadest spot in the ocean.”
“The Deadest Spot
In The Ocean…”
It sits in the center of the South Pacific Gyre—a massive, rotating current encompassing an area twice the size of North America. The center of the gyre is a semi-still area with very little current and wind activity. As a result, the water contains very little in the way of nutrients to support any kind of organic ecosystem. A lack of biological life in the water and air above means no organic material for microbes on the seafloor to feed on, making the seafloor below Point Nemo devoid of even microscopic life.
The conditions in the center of the South Pacific Gyre make this sizeable portion of the globe hostile to biological life—essentially making it a massive oceanic desert.
1.
The center of the gyre receives relatively little current or wind flow, preventing nutrient-rich water from entering the area to support smaller organisms.
2.
Without smaller lifeforms, larger fish have no food source in the area.
3.
The extreme distance from land prevents organic material from entering the area on wind currents.
4.
The lack of life in the upper waters of the ocean results in a lack of marine snow—decayed organic material—from falling to the ocean floor for bottom dwelling animals to feed on, further choking off life in the gyre.
“The Deadest Spot
In The Ocean…
point nemo
The South Pacific Gyre—with Point Nemo at its center—is essentially a super massive desert.
But while you won’t find much in the way of sea life around Point Nemo, you may find something a bit more interesting…
Scattered across the seafloor beneath Point Nemo are the charred and twisted remains of over 260 spacecraft and satellites.
The Spaceship Graveyard
Because of its extreme isolation, space agencies from all over the world often select Point Nemo as a crash reentry target for old satellites, rockets, and space stations. With no inhabited land for over 1,600 miles in any direction, the odds of a piece of space debris striking any person or property are exceedingly low.
You won’t find large chunks of spacecraft remains—reentry is a violent process that largely results in the destruction of the vehicles themselves. Nor will you find centralized areas of debris, as the spacecraft remains rain down across massive areas. But bits and pieces of space-grade metal can be found across the area around Point Nemo, finding their final resting place in a cold, dark, and lifeless ocean floor—friendly confines for a spaceship.
Most notable amongst the Spaceship Graveyard’s residents is likely the Russian MIR space station, the craft that orbited the Earth from 1986 to 2001, when it was decommissioned and sent into a controlled reentry, spreading debris across the far South Pacific around Point Nemo. Of the 143-tons of material that made up MIR, just 20-25 tons survived reentry and sunk to the bottom
of the ocean.
The idea of open space can be hard for human beings to deal with. We seem to have an inherent need to fill emptiness with something—background music to replace silence, games to replace boredom, things to fill space. We fetishize those who choose to live with less, but rarely take on the challenge ourself.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
The idea of nothingness goes against everything we know. It makes us viscerally uncomfortable. There cannot be nothing. There must be something.
Still, we’re curious.
I hesitated to write this piece. What is there to say about a location defined by its emptiness? But the concept of Point Nemo fascinated me. The idea of sitting on that flight, connected to the world by modern technology, but simultaneously being the most isolated human on the planet, is one of those mind exercises that forces you to take pause and marvel at the sheer size of the place we live, and how small we really are.
Time and again, the people I mentioned Point Nemo had strong emotional reactions of either wonder or dread. I was greeted by either a far off look of contemplation, or sweaty palms and nervous laughs of mild panic. But rarely was the reaction muted. It’s too foreign of a world for that.
In its nothingness, it becomes something.
And the void is filled.
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