by Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you want to answer from an expert, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.
Are people on the head of the world on the South Pole on the head? – Ralph P., us
When I stood at the South Pole, I felt just like me everywhere on earth because my feet were still on the floor and the sky was still over us.
I am an astrophysicist from Wisconsin who lived at the South Pole for seven weeks from December 2024 to January 2025 to work on a number of detectors who are looking for extremely energetic particles from space.
I didn’t feel on my head, but there were some differences that still prompted the South Pole to be reversed by what I was used to.
As someone who loves to look for the moon, I noticed that the man’s face was turned over on the moon as if he went from 🙂 to 🙃. All craters that I was used to see on the top of the moon of Wisconsin were now on the underside – because I looked at the moon from the southern hemisphere instead of the northern hemisphere.
After noticing this difference, I remembered something similar in the night sky of New Zealand, a country near the Antarctic, where my fellow travelers and I got our big red coats that kept us warm at the South Pole. I had searched for Orion, a constellation that is seen as a hunter in the northern hemisphere who holds an arch and pulls an arrow out of his quiver. In the night sky of New Zealand, Orion looked as if he was going to have a handstand.
Everything in the sky felt wrong and opposite, compared to what I was used to. A person who lives in the southern hemisphere could feel the same way if you visit the Arctic or the North Pole.
An extraordinary perspective
To understand what happens and why things are really different, but are also very similar, it could be useful to support a little from the surface of the earth. Like in space. In space missions to the moon, astronauts could see a side of the globe immediately.
If you had a superhero perspective, an astronaut would see people at the South Pole and the North Pole together. And a person at the equator looked like they were stretching directly alongside the planet. Although they may be on the equator, people in Colombia and Indonesia would also look as if they were on their heads because they would get out of the opposite sides of the earth.
If you ask every person, you would of course say: “My feet are on the floor and the sky is up.”
This is because the earth is essentially a really big ball, the gravity of which indicates the middle of the planet on each of us. The direction in which the earth pulls us is what people call “below” on the whole planet. Remember to keep a baseball between your pointer fingers. From the perspective of your fingertips on the surface of the ball, both show “down”. But from the perspective of a friend nearby, her fingers show in different directions – although always towards the middle of the ball.
However, these relationships between people on the surface of the earth are good for a bit of fun. As I was at the South Pole, I showed my body in the same direction as my friends in Wisconsin – by making a handstand. But if you look at the picture, it looks like I keep the entire planet like Superman.
This is the right way up: Abigail Bishop makes a handstand on the ceremonial south pole. Abigail bishop
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This article will be released from the conversation, a non -profit, independent news organization that brings you facts and trustworthy analyzes to help you understand our complex world. It was written by: Abigail Bishop, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Abigail Bishop receives funds from the National Science Foundation Award 2013134 and has received funds from the Belgian American Education Foundation.
