If you wanted to find the spot farthest from any land mass on Earth, you’d end up at Point Nemo, an ultra-remote point in the Pacific Ocean. It’s 1,450 nautical miles (2,688 kilometers) from Ducie Island, which is part of the Pitcairn Islands, and Motu Nui, one of the Easter Islands. Zooming out to a macro view, the coordinates (48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W) will lead you way out into the Pacific, west of South America and east of Australia.
This spot, named after Captain Nemo from the Jules Verne novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, is also known as the Oceanic Point of Inaccessibility.
Where space junk goes to die:
- The Oceanic Point of Inaccessibility was famously used by author H. P. Lovecraft as R'lyeh, the earthly home of Cthulhu.
- This is the part of the Pacific where hundreds of satellites, space stations, and other spacecraft splash down after reentering the Earth’s atmosphere.
- Croatian-Canadian survey engineer Hrvoje Lukatela pinpointed Point Nemo in 1992 using a geospatial computer program.