Geographical centre of Earth

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2023-01-31 04:30:08

The geographical center of Earth is the geometric center of all land surfaces on Earth. Geometrically defined it is the Centroid of all land surfaces within the two dimensions of the Geoid surface which approximates the Earth's outer shape. The term center of minimum distance[1] specifies the concept more precisely as the domain is the sphere surface without boundary and not the sphere as three-dimensional body.

Explained in a different way, it is the location on the surface of Earth where the sum of distances to all locations on land is the smallest. If you had an airplane with an infinite energy resource and fly from one start location on Earth to one location on a land surface somewhere on Earth and back again and repeat that from the same start location to all possible destination locations, the starting locations where the total travel distance sums up as the smallest, marks the geographical center of Earth.

In 1864, Charles Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Royal for Scotland, gave in his book Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid the coordinates with 30°00′N 31°00′E  /  30.000°N 31.000°E  / 30.000; 31.000  (Geographical center of all land surfaces on Earth (Smyth 1864) ) , the location of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.[3][4] He stated that this had been calculated by "carefully summing up all the dry land habitable by man all the wide world over".[3]

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