Mystery Solved: You’ll find yourself here if you dig a hole in the ground from Groningen

You’ve probably wondered (or not): where the hell do you end up if you dig straight from Groningen? We have the answer !

If you plan on it, bring your snorkel. You end up at the sea!

New Zealand

To be precise, you end up in the South Pacific Ocean, about a thousand kilometers outside of New Zealand. A little closer are a few small islands, such as Campbell Island, Antipodes Island and the Chatham Islands. You have to swim a bit for that, but this sight is well worth those sour swimming arms, right?

Antipode

Such a point on the other side of the world has a name: an antipode. The antipode of any place on Earth is the point on the Earth’s surface that is diametrically opposite to it. To put it simply, if you dig a hole down, you will come to the antipode from where you started digging.

Some cities are “antipodes cities”. This means that they are connected by a straight line that goes through the center of the earth. For example, Madrid (Spain) and Weber (New Zealand) are poles apart, Shanghai (China) and Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Bangkok (Thailand) and Phnom Penh (Cambodia). Groningen is not an antipodal city, because the antipodal point of Groningen is in the middle of the sea.

Map of the antipodes

If you are wondering how we arrived at this answer, take a look at antipodesmap.com. There you can fill a spot and you will immediately see what exactly can be found on the other side of the world.