Over 1,000 miles away from anywhere people live, Point Nemo stands out as a unique spot on the planet.
People commonly talk about "the middle of nowhere," but guess what? Scientists have pinpointed the exact spot! Point Nemo, the farthest place from civilization on Earth, is so isolated that the nearest humans are probably astronauts.
That's why NASA and other space agencies worldwide have picked Point Nemo in the Pacific Ocean as the spot to lay to rest falling space stuff. When the International Space Station takes a tumble in 2031, it's gonna happen right here—about as far from people as you can get on the map.
Where Is Point Nemo?
Point Nemo is officially dubbed the "oceanic pole of inaccessibility," marking the farthest point in the ocean from any land. Positioned at 48°52.6'S 123°23.6'W, it's smack dab in the middle of nowhere, with over 1,000 miles of ocean stretching out in every direction.
The nearest chunks of land to the pole are one of the Pitcairn Islands up north, one of the Easter Islands to the northeast, and an island off the coast of Antarctica down south.
No folks live close to Point Nemo. Scientists decided to name the place "Nemo" since it's Latin for "no one" and a nod to Captain Nemo, the submarine captain from Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Nemo is way out there—so far that the nearest folks aren't even on Earth. The International Space Station astronauts, as per the BBC, hover about 258 miles above the Earth's surface most of the time. With the closest inhabited spot to Point Nemo being over 1,000 miles away, the space-dwellers are way closer to the pole of inaccessibility than the ones on solid ground.
The Most Remote Place On Earth
Even the guy who figured out exactly where Point Nemo is hasn't been there. Back in 1992, a Croatian survey engineer named Hrvoje Lukatela used a computer program to pinpoint the spot in the Pacific that's the farthest from any land.
As per Live Science, the program crunched numbers to find coordinates farthest from three equally spaced land points. It's quite likely that no human has ever cruised through the precise coordinates of Point Nemo.
When it comes to critters, there aren't too many hanging out at Point Nemo either. This place sits in the South Pacific Gyre, a massive swirling current that keeps nutrient-packed water from reaching the area. Without grub to go around, keeping most forms of life going in this part of the ocean is a no-go.
But don't get the idea that there's absolutely no life in the neighborhood. Scientists have found a bunch of bacteria and tiny crabs hanging out near the volcanic vents on the seafloor at Point Nemo.
Mysteries Associated With Point Nemo
Point Nemo sits in what Vice calls "the least biologically active region of the world ocean." So, it was a real shocker for scientists in 1997 when they picked up one of the loudest underwater sounds ever recorded right around the oceanic pole of inaccessibility.
Underwater microphones, over 3,000 miles apart, snagged this sound. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the U.S. scratched their heads, unable to imagine anything big enough to make such a booming noise underwater. They called this mysterious sound "The Bloop." But fans of sci-fi had a quick idea.
Back in 1926, when writer H.P. Lovecraft brought his infamous tentacled monster to life in "The Call of Cthulhu," he placed the creature's hideout in the lost city of R'yleh in the south Pacific Ocean. Lovecraft threw in coordinates for R'yleh: 47°9'S 126°43'W. Strangely enough, these coordinates are pretty darn close to Point Nemo's and where The Bloop made its big noise.
Back in 1928, H.P. Lovecraft introduced his sea monster a good 66 years before Lukatela figured out Nemo's spot. This time gap has got some folks thinking that maybe the pole of inaccessibility was actually the dwelling place of some unknown creature.
Turns out, The Bloop wasn't the Call of Cthulhu after all. It was just the sound of ice cracking off Antarctica.
But Point Nemo has another kind of spooky story. Because it's so isolated and far from shipping paths, they picked the area around Nemo to be a "spaceship graveyard."
Since self-driving spaceships, satellites, and other space leftovers aren't built to survive re-entry into Earth's atmosphere (the heat usually wrecks them), scientists had to pick a spot where there's an incredibly low chance of any humans getting hit by space debris.
Being completely uninhabited, Point Nemo, the oceanic pole of inaccessibility, became the ideal fix. CNN reports that NASA got the ball rolling in 1971, and since then, over 263 bits of space clutter have made their way down there. This includes some big shots like the Russian Mir space station and NASA's pioneer space station, Skylab.
Even if there's no Lovecraftian monster hiding in its depths, Point Nemo is encircled by the remnants of spacecraft that are definitely not from around here.
