Eli5: why isn’t someone upside down when they are on the south pole of the earth?
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For people here on Earth, ‘up’ is the direction away from the center of the Earth, and ‘down’ is towards the center of the Earth.
They are upside down compared to someone at the north pole, but since everything else is upside down it doesn’t make any difference.
But if you look “up” to the stars you’ll see a completely different set to northy and his polar bears.
Because what we consider “down” is towards whatever gravitational force that has the strongest pull on us. The amount of gravitational pull something has is relevant to how much mass it containts, because mass compresses space, which causes smaller objects nearby to “fall” towards it. In our case, the center of earth is the point with the strongest gravitational pull, and we’re the small objects that’s falling towards it.
Really? When you are asked to point “down”, do you point south? If you understand which way YOU point to “down” and try to imagine someone in another location pointing “down”, then you will start to understand. Now you can do the reverse, when someone asks you to point “up”, do you point North or do you point towards the sky?
Up and down, north and south are relative terms we labeled the earth to make sense of it. There is no up or down in space.
Gravity points toward the center of the Earth. Now if somebody was standing at the north pole and looked down through a transparent planet to somebody standing at the south pole, that person would be upside down from their perspective.
There’s actually a description at the end of Dante’s Inferno where Dante looks and sees Satan upside down and asks why and is told that since down from anyone’s perspective is towards the center of the earth and Hell is on the opposite side of the Earth then someone on the other side of the Earth would be upside down from his perspective. I thought this was fascinating because Dante’s work came long before anyone sailed all the way around the Earth.
Down is defined as the direction towards the centre of the Earth, or the direction that gravity is pulling you. Since if you’re in different hemispheres, gravity is pulling you in different directions, your down is in a different direction too.
If you are a spaceship approaching the planet they can be, if that same space ship rolls 180 then they are not. Perspective/relativity. Believing you are the “up” suggests there is up and down in space. Your are only in the direction of your limited perspective.
Because gravity pulls you towards the center of the Earth, so “down” is always towards the center of the Earth no matter where on the planet you are.
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