There are unexplored places that remind us that there is still much to discover. Such is the case of Point Nemo, considered the most remote place on Earth due to its location.
Point Nemo is located 4800 kilometers off the coast of New Zealand and 3200 kilometers north of Antarctica. It is so isolated that the closest point of land to this site is more than 400 kilometers away. This means that the closest humans to this region of the planet are the astronauts of the International Space Station.
Also called the Pacific Inaccessibility Pole, although due to the complexity of its name it is commonly known as Point Nemo in honor of Captain Nemo, a fictional character from Jules Verne’s literature.
This point was identified only 30 years ago when engineer Hrvoje Lukatele calculated its coordinates as accurately as possible. However, it was necessary to use a specialized computer program to know the exact coordinates.
What’s in Point Nemo?
Point Nemo is completely uninhabited due to its geographical conditions in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. This important natural laboratory is between 227 and 248 nautical miles above the surface of our planet.
At this point in the Pacific Ocean, there is an enormous continuous mass of water. This results in almost no existence of aquatic life because it is too far from land and the winds do not carry biological matter there. Although certainly nothing can be concluded since life has been found in other regions of the planet that were previously thought to be inhospitable.
Be that as it may, the belief that it is a biologically inactive spot led NASA to turn it into a spacecraft graveyard. And it was even announced recently that it would be the resting place for the International Space Station after it completes its duties in 2030.
A Spaceship Graveyard
This will not be the first time that this remote site has been the disposal site for objects that have been in space. It has long since become a graveyard for spacecraft, as several countries have directed space junk to it. The Russian and Japanese space agencies have sent their obsolete satellites to the depths of this region in the Pacific Ocean. The remains of the Russian Mir station and at least a hundred other disused space objects also rest there.
The sound of the world’s most isolated spot
During the summer of 1997, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) picked up a strange ultra-low frequency sound through underwater microphones placed in the Pacific Ocean. This enigmatic noise was then called Bloop. However, despite the mystery it represented at the time, five years later the agency determined that the sounds came from Point Nemo and were produced by large icebergs colliding with the ocean floor.
Our planet is gigantic compared to the tiny size of human beings and still has great surprises to offer us.
Story originally published in Ecoosfera
