The centre would be the place where you could balance the cut-out on a pin, and it would be perfectly horizontal. The results for this method would be:. In the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia determined, as a Bicentennial project, the geographical centre of Australia.
A monument was erected to mark the location and named in honour of Dr. Bruce P Lambert, a former Director of the Division of National Mapping, for his achievements in the national survey, levelling and mapping of the continent. Similar to the centre of gravity method, the location was calculated from 24 points at the high water mark of Australia's coastline. In the s when Dr C. Madigan travelled through Central Australia he calculated the centre of gravity by using a metal cut-out of Australia with a plumb bob and string.
His crude measurement was surprisingly accurate as he selected a point less than 11 kilometres due west of this present position. A series of concentric circles drawn on transparent material were moved over the top of a million scale map of Australia until one circle was found to touch the coast at three points.
Think of it as the largest perfect circle that could be drawn anywhere inside Australia that only just touches the coastlines. The centre of the circle was then marked and the coordinates scaled from the map. This method resulted in a good agreement with the centre of gravity procedure.
This is remarkable, and due to Australia's shape rather than any general rule of correlation between the two methods. The geodetic median point was calculated as the midpoint between the extremes of latitude and longitude of the continent.
Basically what this means is that a box was drawn around Australia, just touching the northern, eastern, southern, and western-most points on the mainland of the continent. The geodetic median point is the location of the intersection the two geodesic 2 lines joining the four corners. The geodetic median point will be the point where the ellipsoidal distance of the four geodesic lines joining the median point to each corner will be the same. Vincenty's formulae was used to compute the value of the equidistant ellipsoidal distance on the GRS80 ellipsoid, which came to 2,, What's interesting though is this; both this method and the furthest point from the coastline method produce coordinates that are within the ball-park of the other weighted methods.
That means that despite the irregular coastline, Australia's distinctive shape actually has a relatively high degree of symmetry. This trigonometric survey cairn, situated about one kilometre north of Mt Cavenagh Homestead, was built by officers of the Division of National Mapping in , and was once the central reference point for all Australian surveys.
The centre of the Australian Capital Territory might be thought of as the former site of the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, approximately 35km south-south-west of Canberra. The tracking station played a leading role in the NASA Apollo missions, closing in with the end of the Skylab program.
The radio telescope was dismantled and relocated to Tidbinbilla in One possible definition of the centre for New South Wales is located just off Cockies Road, 33km west-north-west of Tottenham Tottenham is km west of Dubbo.
This spot, south of the Fiveways Intersection, is marked by a large sign, constructed for Australia's Bicentennial celebrations. Using the method described earlier, one estimate of where the centre of the Northern Territory lies can be found approximately 91 km west-north-west of Tennant Creek.
A short distance past the Kartijirarrakanya Claypan, this centre is in a particularly harsh, arid part of the territory. In Queensland, the geographical centre is located 17km north-west of Muttaburra. Also famous from a paleontological perspective, this region was once a pre-historic inland sea. A wealth of fossilized remains has been uncovered here, and when a previously undiscovered species was found, it was became known as the Muttaburrasaurus.
At least the subject is worth investigating. In addition to its purely academic and esthetic interest, there could be innumerable future applications of the information. Other things being equal, the cost of operating such systems would be minimized and the ease of utilizing such systems would be maximized if their hubs were located reasonably near the center of all the subsystems around the world that would have to be keyed into them.
The location of the center of the earth is thus desirable not only esthetically and theologically, but also scientifically and economically.
Until the present time, however, such information could not have been acquired at all. However, the geography of the continents and islands is so intricately complex that there was no feasible way of calculating their center until the advent of the high-speed digital computer.
If the earth had only one continent, and if it had a regular geometric shape say a circle or rectangle , it would be easy enough to determine its center. But the actual situation is of course vastly more complicated. The result is the average distance from the reference area to all the other unit areas around the world. Actually, the calculation becomes feasible only if it can be programmed on a high speed computer.
To accomplish the latter requires a knowledge of spherical trigonometry, geodesy, calculus, and computer science. With these factors present, the computation then becomes quite feasible. This particular research investigation was first proposed by Andrew J. Woods, M. The project was sponsored by the Institute for Creation Research to the extent of providing funds for computer time rental and for publication of the resulting Technical Monograph.
Woods performed all the analyses and programming on his own time. His results are summarized in the form of a project report, incorporated now in that Monograph.
The theory behind the analysis, the computer results, and his conclusions are all given in detail there. This fact is significant statistically.
This is highly significant, from a statistical point of view, even more so in light of the Biblical inferences to this effect, and is strong evidence of divine planning. The exact center of the earth, insofar as Mr. Theologically speaking, it might have seemed more appropriate for this exact center to have turned out to be in Jerusalem, or else at Mount Ararat or possibly Babel. Of these three, it is essentially equidistant, about miles, from Ararat and Jerusalem.
As far as the needs of a potential center of world activities are concerned, these also would be met by a site anywhere in this region. Other factors besides that of precise centrality would of course have to be considered in the choice of such a location. In terms of practical applications, the difference is negligible. This point is east of the southern tip of New Zealand and west of the southern tip of South America, far from land of any kind.
This would be the worst place to locate any kind of world activity center! The average distance to the land areas of the earth from this point was found to be 7, miles. March 15, , paper. For a full discussion of the above research study, with complete analysis, obtain the I. Technical Monograph No. Henry M. Cite this article: Morris, H. The Center of the Earth.
Skip to main content.
0コメント