Ms. Abigail Bishop - an astrophysicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, who lived and worked for nearly 2 months in Antarctica - said: "When I stand in Antarctica, I feel like any other place on Earth because my feet are still on the ground and the sky is still above my head.
I don't feel upside down, but there are still some differences that make Antarctica feel upside down compared to what I'm used to seeing.”
She said she was an avid moon watcher and noticed that the “banyan tree” on the moon was upside down. All the craters on the moon that she observed while in Wisconsin appeared to be upside down when she was in Antarctica, because she was looking 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 Antarctica, where my companions and I wore red jackets to keep warm in Antarctica.
I was looking for Orion, a constellation that in the Northern Hemisphere is depicted as a hunter holding a bow and pulling an arrow from his quiver. In the New Zealand night sky, Orion looks like he's doing a headstand," Ms Bishop shared.
“Everything in the sky felt upside down and completely opposite to what I was used to. A person living in the Southern Hemisphere might feel the same way when visiting the Arctic,” Ms Bishop continued.
An unusual perspective
To understand what's going on, and why things are so different yet feel so similar, let's imagine standing a little above the surface of the Earth, like on a spaceship.
During flights to the Moon, astronauts could see an entire side of the Earth.
If an astronaut had superhuman vision, he would see people at the North and South Poles standing upside down. And a person at the equator would look as if they were sticking out of the edge of the planet.
In fact, even though they might be standing on the equator, people in Colombia and Indonesia would look as if they were upside down, because they are protruding from opposite sides of the Earth.
Of course, if you ask each person, everyone will say "my feet are on the ground, and the sky is up above".
Because the Earth is essentially a giant sphere, its gravitational pull on each of us is pulling us toward the center of the planet. The direction the Earth is pulling us is what people all over the planet call "downward."
Imagine you're holding a ball between your two index fingers. From the perspective of your fingertips on the surface of the ball, they're both pointing "down." But from the perspective of a friend standing nearby, your fingers are pointing in different directions - although they're always pointing toward the center of the ball.
However, the human relationships on the surface of the Earth are also somewhat interesting.
“When I was in Antarctica, I did a handstand and my body was facing my friends in Wisconsin, the same direction they were facing, but if you look at the photo the other way around, it looks like I'm holding up the planet, just like Superman,” Bishop said.
Source: https://dantri.com.vn/khoa-hoc/nguoi-o-nam-cuc-co-dung-lon-nguoc-so-voi-noi-khac-tren-trai-dat-khong-20250717004757491.htm
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