As a youngster, I was often told that if I dug a hole deep enough, I would eventually find myself in China. I tried “digging a hole to China” a couple times, but I’d always give up as soon as my shovel would hit the bottom of the sandbox. Needless to say, I was not bright as a little boy.

Through the magic of the internets, we’re now easily able to discover just where we’d pop out if we really dug a hole through the center of the Earth. This map is handy for finding out a rough approximation of the antipodal (opposite) point of any place in the world, while this one is better for a bit more precision.

So if you were to dig a hole to the exact opposite side of the Earth, would you really end up in China? Not unless you live in certain parts of Chile or Argentina. In my case, I’d need to bring my swimming trunks, and so would almost all residents of the continental US, as we’d end up in the Indian Ocean between southern Africa and Australia.

Somehow, the phrase “dig a hole to somewhere between southern Africa and Australia” just doesn’t work.

But if you do dig a hole to China, you might expect to see….

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