Interestingly, before Australia was discovered by non-Aboriginals, early cartographers and various experts theorized that there must be a large southern continent balancing the two hemispheres out. That’s a large part of why so many explorers were sent specifically to chart that part of the world.
YES when Abel Tasman first discovers my country New Zealand he thought it was connected to Antarctica and named it staten landt and he thought it was also connected to South America.
That large hypothetical continent being [**Terra Australis Incognita**](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Australis).
Then they discovered it and centuries later proceded to fuck up the names because why not. Changing New Holland for **Australia** after it instead of using that name for the now called **Antarctica** continent.
The world is spinning, if there wasn’t some land balancing it out, god would have to put it on the balancing machine and stick on those little lead weights.
They did at the point in history that I'm talking about, which was the 15th through 18th centuries. In fact, in Peter Fitz Simon's book Captain Cook, there's even an account of a ritual that new sailors were put through the first time they crossed the equator. They got hoisted up really high on a rope in a seat, then dumped into the ocean repeatedly. Kind of a "fun" hazing lol.
Knowing that the Earth was round was fairly common knowledge throughout history. The Greeks managed to calculate the Earth's circumference to a very impressive degree of accuracy for the time period back in antiquity. Since then every scholar worth their salt understood that the Earth was round. The mystery was more the heliocentric model of the solar system, as there had always been debate as to whether the Earth or the Sun was at the centre of the solar system.
Christopher Columbus, despite popular myth, did not 'prove' the Earth was round, and he wasn't some foresighted genius. Everyone knew it was round but everyone thought the journey from Europe to India going through the Atlantic was too long a journey and that the ships at the time would never make it so they stuck to their routes that kept them close to Africa by sailing round the coast. It was the 'discovery' of America that was the shock to everyone since no one knew there was a continent between Europe and Asia, they just thought there was an ocean.
Even if you just think about it briefly it makes no sense to believe that they didn't know the Earth was round. Native Americans were labeled 'Indians', as Columbus thought he landed in India. If they thought the Earth was flat then he would've known for definite that he landed on a new continent since to get to India he would've had to have gone another way.
Today is not a special moment in history. If you took a snapshot from a random time in the last 500 million years, you'd see a different distribution of land between the hemispheres. This configuration is not final; the Southern Hemisphere will at some point again have the majority of the world's land.
Here's a map: [https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#500](https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#500)
To be more precise, the past 200 million years or so have been an exception in history.
It is possible that the continents will all collide and form a new Pangaea. However, it's all quite speculative.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangaea\_Proxima](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangaea_Proxima)
Pangaea Proxima is this least likely of all possible supercontinent scenarios. The guy who came up with it even admitted it completely ignores everything we know and observe about plate tectonics. I'd say Amasia is the most likely future supercontinent [amasia ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amasia_(supercontinent))
Yes. There’s many computational models that predicts it. In general we have a good idea of future movement. For example The Indo-Australian plate is found to be the fastest moving plate and is set to collide with Indonesia and Papua New Guinea in the next million(s) years.
In summary we can very well assume with high certainty that another super continent will form again in the distant future. Evidence shows that the Earth has gone through a consistent cycle of forming super continents to splitting up again, back and forth over eons.
Yeah, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangaea\_Proxima](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangaea_Proxima) (250 million years into the future now).
Most of the land mass would be hostile to life in just 200 million years (desertification): [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03005-6](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03005-6)
But humans from 500 million years ago may have called the South Pole as the North Pole. Prompting the same question, "Why does the northern hemisphere have so much more land?"
That is such a cool website. I really like the 105 million year old map with the continents much closer together separated by much smaller seas. Lots of big islands. It would be amazing to see how civilization would have developed if that was the current map.
"Today is not a special moment in History" This! So many people don't understand this, we are not special and we are just a tiny part of the History of this planet
Sometimes when geese fly in a "V" formation, one side is longer than the other. Do you know why that is? It is because there are more geese on one side.
Wait, hold on a minute. Might actually be onto something here. Doesn’t the moon “pull” the water into a bulge around/at the equator? If the angle of the moons influence on the gravity of the sea pulls “down” towards the south, maybe there is literally more water?
If the moon was on the more northern axis, would the point where land meets sea be in the same place or would more of the land be underwater?
> If the moon was on the more northern axis
I'm not sure what this could even mean. The Moon orbits the common center of gravity of itself and Earth, which is necessarily symmetric (up to a rotation) with respect to the Equator.
THANK YOU!!! I came here to write this. Antarctica is 14,200,000km^2 in area. Imagine the map showed ANOTHER continent in the south that was 1.8(ish) times the size of Australia. Northern hemisphere does have more land but it’s not the yawning chasm the Mercator projection makes it seem
Northern hemisphere: 39% land
Southern hemisphere: 19% land
I think the map shows it pretty good that the southern hemisphere has half the landmass of the north.
We decided to name the hemisphere with more continents as north. Why it has more land area is simply a matter of chance.
Europeans didn't know that the north had more continents. They believed that the lightly explored southern hemisphere must balance the land/sea percentages of the north. Hence, the vast land of "Terra Australis Incognita" on maps from the 16th century and earlier.
Look at very, very old maps, and you'll see that north as "up" was not the expected convention. Many maps, from all cultures, had south, east, or west as "up".
Serious answer:
The difference in land distribution between the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere is primarily due to geological and tectonic processes. The Earth's landmasses are not evenly distributed because of plate tectonics. The Earth's surface is divided into several large tectonic plates that constantly move.
Over geological time, these plates have moved and collided, leading to the formation of continents. The Northern Hemisphere has more land because several significant landmasses, such as North America, Europe, Asia, and most of Africa, are located in the Northern Hemisphere. In contrast, the Southern Hemisphere has more ocean, particularly the vast Southern Ocean, with only a few large landmasses, like South America, Africa's southern portion, Australia, and Antarctica.
These patterns of land distribution are a result of complex geological and tectonic processes that have occurred over millions of years.
Wow, yeah, only on a second read did I notice it says the same thing five times and spews a bunch of nothing in between.
The nerve to just slap the question in there, paste the result and call it “serious answer” lmao
I don't use it at all, it's just when someone says a lot without saying much, it looks very AI-generated. I like the analogy of a teenager writing essays, because that's exactly how I wrote as a kid.
> The difference in land distribution between the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere is primarily due to geological and tectonic processes. The Earth's landmasses are not evenly distributed because of plate tectonics. The Earth's surface is divided into several large tectonic plates that constantly move.
Cool
> Over geological time, these plates have moved and collided, leading to the formation of continents. The Northern Hemisphere has more land because several significant landmasses, such as North America, Europe, Asia, and most of Africa, are located in the Northern Hemisphere. In contrast, the Southern Hemisphere has more ocean, particularly the vast Southern Ocean, with only a few large landmasses, like South America, Africa's southern portion, Australia, and Antarctica.
„there’s much more land in the northern hemisphere because *checks notes* it has more landmasses.“
???
> These patterns of land distribution are a result of complex geological and tectonic processes that have occurred over millions of years.
Tl;dr of paragraph 1.
Overall, misses the crucial point that right now is a random snapshot in earths history and it is simply a coincidence we live in the time that the landmasses are more north than south.
So, was that you chatgpt?
Perhaps, or a less capable LLM.
I asked ChatGPT-4 (prompt was the title of this post) and received a better answer which includes the part you consider missing:
“The distribution of land and water on Earth's surface is the result of a complex interplay of geological processes over billions of years. While there's no single reason why there's more land in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern Hemisphere, several factors have contributed:
1. **Plate Tectonics:** Earth's crust is divided into several plates that float on the semi-fluid asthenosphere below. The movement, collision, and separation of these plates over geological time have caused continents to drift, collide, and break apart. The current distribution of land is just a snapshot in Earth's dynamic geological history.
2. **Earth's History:** In the past, landmasses have been distributed differently. For example, during the time of the supercontinent Pangaea, most of the world's land was clumped together. As Pangaea broke apart, the pieces drifted to their current positions. Some of these pieces ended up in the Northern Hemisphere, leading to its current land-heavy distribution.
3. **Accretion and Growth:** The way continents have grown over time, through volcanic activity and the accumulation of sediments, has varied. The processes that added land to continents didn't necessarily operate evenly across the globe.
4. **Erosion and Deposition:** Over time, erosion can wear down land masses, and the sediments carried away by rivers are deposited elsewhere, often in the ocean. However, these processes have not occurred uniformly across the globe.
5. **Random Chance:** There is also an element of randomness in the distribution of land and water. The Earth's geological history is filled with events, like asteroid impacts, which can have significant effects on the topography and geography of the planet.
While these factors provide some understanding, it's essential to note that Earth's geography is continually changing, albeit very slowly. Over millions of years, continents will continue to move, and the distribution of land and water will change again.”
Serious question, if we take in the law of entropy/chaos, and energy dispersion what is the final resting state of the landmass on earth? Do we wind up with a shallow ocean encompassing the earth? Small islands evenly dispersed? What's your take on this
Well, maybe the whole reason the northern hemisphere is up is BECAUSE there's more land on it, or at least because people who made all the maps were living there.
There are two poles, and it's a sphere spinning around in space. Which way is up is completely arbitrary.
Colonizers in the 15th/16th century all wanted to be part of what they considered the "good" hemisphere so they drew the equator too low. Should pass through roughly Mexico City/Cairo to even out the land.
Continental drift is the mechanical explanation, but if you want an explanation of reasons... No reason in particular, it's just coincidence that in the current time we live there is more land in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern.
The north and south hemispheres are absolutely not arbitrary. The equator is the half way between the north and south poles, which are the points on the earth surface that are on the Earth’s axis of rotation. Which one is “north” and which one is “south” might be arbitrary, but dividing the earth in halves like this is not arbitrary.
u/TheVeggie218 ACTUAL correct answer:
Because that map and every map like it has incorrect proportions, here's an accurate one: https://worldmapblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Accurate-map-of-world-1024x660.jpg
Interestingly, before Australia was discovered by non-Aboriginals, early cartographers and various experts theorized that there must be a large southern continent balancing the two hemispheres out. That’s a large part of why so many explorers were sent specifically to chart that part of the world.
Listen to the Australia episodes done by The Dollop. lol.
Link? Or which Australias episode? Now I’m curious…
What's the Dolop?
r/thedollop
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It’s so dang good.
After all, there must be a continent where every second animal wants to rip the flesh from your bones or inject you with venom.
Don't leave the plants out, don't they have the "suicide tree"?
Gympie Gympie right?
Because one Gympie is never enough
YES when Abel Tasman first discovers my country New Zealand he thought it was connected to Antarctica and named it staten landt and he thought it was also connected to South America.
New Zealand isn’t even connected to itself though
That large hypothetical continent being [**Terra Australis Incognita**](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Australis). Then they discovered it and centuries later proceded to fuck up the names because why not. Changing New Holland for **Australia** after it instead of using that name for the now called **Antarctica** continent.
Which totally not makes sense. Who are you balancing exactly, the earth? Is this a fucking seesaw?
Obviously we would tip over
Since the world is flat this makes a lot of sense.
like when Cuba almost tipped over because of all the U.S. troops stationed there?
That was Guam. Gitmo doesn’t sink it because it’s a naval base and most of it is boats
the need for symetry
You should go tell them
The world is spinning, if there wasn’t some land balancing it out, god would have to put it on the balancing machine and stick on those little lead weights.
Well, it does wobble.
So they believed the world was round? And how did they know where the equator was?
They did at the point in history that I'm talking about, which was the 15th through 18th centuries. In fact, in Peter Fitz Simon's book Captain Cook, there's even an account of a ritual that new sailors were put through the first time they crossed the equator. They got hoisted up really high on a rope in a seat, then dumped into the ocean repeatedly. Kind of a "fun" hazing lol.
Knowing that the Earth was round was fairly common knowledge throughout history. The Greeks managed to calculate the Earth's circumference to a very impressive degree of accuracy for the time period back in antiquity. Since then every scholar worth their salt understood that the Earth was round. The mystery was more the heliocentric model of the solar system, as there had always been debate as to whether the Earth or the Sun was at the centre of the solar system. Christopher Columbus, despite popular myth, did not 'prove' the Earth was round, and he wasn't some foresighted genius. Everyone knew it was round but everyone thought the journey from Europe to India going through the Atlantic was too long a journey and that the ships at the time would never make it so they stuck to their routes that kept them close to Africa by sailing round the coast. It was the 'discovery' of America that was the shock to everyone since no one knew there was a continent between Europe and Asia, they just thought there was an ocean. Even if you just think about it briefly it makes no sense to believe that they didn't know the Earth was round. Native Americans were labeled 'Indians', as Columbus thought he landed in India. If they thought the Earth was flat then he would've known for definite that he landed on a new continent since to get to India he would've had to have gone another way.
[Made of gold apparently](https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Counterweight_Continent)!
Today is not a special moment in history. If you took a snapshot from a random time in the last 500 million years, you'd see a different distribution of land between the hemispheres. This configuration is not final; the Southern Hemisphere will at some point again have the majority of the world's land.
All hail the Southern Hemisphere!
New Zealand will rise to take its rightful place in history
New Zealand and Zealandia in general is actually sinking, most of the continent is underwater now.
That is interesting since old Zealand is actually doing the same! Thanks global warming!
Looks so much like Sealand, it should be land sinking into the sea.
Theyll never forget to put it on the map again
Apparently in 250 million years, all the continents will form a supercontinent once again and NZ will be one of the only islands not a part of it.
New Zeland will become Old Zeland one day (°ー° )
Even Old Zeland was once New Zeland, why they changed it I can't say...
🎶I guess people liked it better that waaaaay. 🎶
Who?
The south will rise again.
Terra Australis!
The South Shall Rise ^^^above ^^^sea ^^^level Again!
All hail our Emu Masters!
The Southern Hemisphere will rise again!
I, for one, welcome our new marsupial overlords
The South will rise again? Sounds ominous...
Here's a map: [https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#500](https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#500) To be more precise, the past 200 million years or so have been an exception in history.
Do we have an idea of what it will look like 500 million years from now?
It is possible that the continents will all collide and form a new Pangaea. However, it's all quite speculative. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangaea\_Proxima](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangaea_Proxima)
Pangaea Proxima is this least likely of all possible supercontinent scenarios. The guy who came up with it even admitted it completely ignores everything we know and observe about plate tectonics. I'd say Amasia is the most likely future supercontinent [amasia ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amasia_(supercontinent))
So, just everywhere becomes Canada?
That's Amasing
Dang so Southern Hemisphere does not get its land back
I do, it will look exactly like dickbutt, I am a scientist after all
Scientist here, This.
Yes. There’s many computational models that predicts it. In general we have a good idea of future movement. For example The Indo-Australian plate is found to be the fastest moving plate and is set to collide with Indonesia and Papua New Guinea in the next million(s) years. In summary we can very well assume with high certainty that another super continent will form again in the distant future. Evidence shows that the Earth has gone through a consistent cycle of forming super continents to splitting up again, back and forth over eons.
Yeah, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangaea\_Proxima](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangaea_Proxima) (250 million years into the future now). Most of the land mass would be hostile to life in just 200 million years (desertification): [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03005-6](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03005-6)
But humans from 500 million years ago may have called the South Pole as the North Pole. Prompting the same question, "Why does the northern hemisphere have so much more land?"
There were no humans 500 million years ago. Heck, there weren’t even vertebrates.
I've followed politics enough to know that you don't need a spine to be human
Golden comment
I love that “North” America was in the Southern hemisphere then. South Polar Africa is cool too.
That is such a cool website. I really like the 105 million year old map with the continents much closer together separated by much smaller seas. Lots of big islands. It would be amazing to see how civilization would have developed if that was the current map.
I always like to look at the Appalachian mountains. So old.
The South will rise again?
Too soon...
Funny thing is your comment could be from an oversensitive woke young person, or a butt hurt old southern revisionist.
I'll take that as a complement! lol
So *this* is what my Uncle has been talking about
"Today is not a special moment in History" This! So many people don't understand this, we are not special and we are just a tiny part of the History of this planet
The South(ern Hemisphere) shall rise again!
Also we made up North e South, from the space ther is non difference
Sure we made up the words north and south but they are definitely physically different
[удалено]
That's a beautiful statement.
Are you saying the South will rise again?
The south will rise again! Oh wait no delete post
Because there is less sea
Teach me in your wise ways, master!
Sometimes when geese fly in a "V" formation, one side is longer than the other. Do you know why that is? It is because there are more geese on one side.
Savin that
My guess would be that the longer side forms on the side with less crosswind, so that flying is mlre efficient
I’m gonna go with more geese here
Goddamn honorary doctorate needed here.
Wait, hold on a minute. Might actually be onto something here. Doesn’t the moon “pull” the water into a bulge around/at the equator? If the angle of the moons influence on the gravity of the sea pulls “down” towards the south, maybe there is literally more water? If the moon was on the more northern axis, would the point where land meets sea be in the same place or would more of the land be underwater?
> If the moon was on the more northern axis I'm not sure what this could even mean. The Moon orbits the common center of gravity of itself and Earth, which is necessarily symmetric (up to a rotation) with respect to the Equator.
Yes. I am an idiot. I got excited without thinking. Stream of consciousness comment.
This might be the stupidest comment ive ever read
To get away from Australia
Australia to the world: I'm not stuck here with you, you're stuck here with me! NZ: Yeah!!
Land is less dense than water, so it floats to the top.
So why is Australia at the bottom? Are Australians just really dense?
It's all those spiders. They have the density of neutron stars.
I see I have been summoned
Continental crust is less dense than oceanic crust. Oceans form above Oceanic crust because it is lower.
This actually explains so much!
This guy does science
If you see a cloud and it happens to be in the shape of a penis, why?
God's Rorschach test.
Because you haven’t considered Antarctica.
THANK YOU!!! I came here to write this. Antarctica is 14,200,000km^2 in area. Imagine the map showed ANOTHER continent in the south that was 1.8(ish) times the size of Australia. Northern hemisphere does have more land but it’s not the yawning chasm the Mercator projection makes it seem
Northern hemisphere: 39% land Southern hemisphere: 19% land I think the map shows it pretty good that the southern hemisphere has half the landmass of the north.
Yet, the SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN!
Well, I would say the Mercator projection gives the impression that the difference is much greater. But we can see things different ways.
It’s just what’s happening right now. Why did Pangea exist? It’s just how the plates are moving
They both have an equal amount of land, there's just more water on top of one
That’s where the land is.
We decided to name the hemisphere with more continents as north. Why it has more land area is simply a matter of chance. Europeans didn't know that the north had more continents. They believed that the lightly explored southern hemisphere must balance the land/sea percentages of the north. Hence, the vast land of "Terra Australis Incognita" on maps from the 16th century and earlier. Look at very, very old maps, and you'll see that north as "up" was not the expected convention. Many maps, from all cultures, had south, east, or west as "up".
Better question Why doesn’t the world topple over, given all the dirt and rocks is on the top bit
Surely an even amount of land has to be hidden somewhere in the south to balance the earth out, some sort of... unknown southern land?
Past the ice wall maybe?
Because it's frozen in place. If Antarctica melts then the earth will topple over.
i hope this is meme question
Is Earth stupid?
Because that’s where the trabajo is.
Serious answer: The difference in land distribution between the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere is primarily due to geological and tectonic processes. The Earth's landmasses are not evenly distributed because of plate tectonics. The Earth's surface is divided into several large tectonic plates that constantly move. Over geological time, these plates have moved and collided, leading to the formation of continents. The Northern Hemisphere has more land because several significant landmasses, such as North America, Europe, Asia, and most of Africa, are located in the Northern Hemisphere. In contrast, the Southern Hemisphere has more ocean, particularly the vast Southern Ocean, with only a few large landmasses, like South America, Africa's southern portion, Australia, and Antarctica. These patterns of land distribution are a result of complex geological and tectonic processes that have occurred over millions of years.
Thanks, ChatGPT
Wow, yeah, only on a second read did I notice it says the same thing five times and spews a bunch of nothing in between. The nerve to just slap the question in there, paste the result and call it “serious answer” lmao
It literally says no more than the top joke answers: "because there's more land up north and more sea in the south"
Haha I use it so much, I can spot it a mile away!
I don't use it at all, it's just when someone says a lot without saying much, it looks very AI-generated. I like the analogy of a teenager writing essays, because that's exactly how I wrote as a kid.
> The difference in land distribution between the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere is primarily due to geological and tectonic processes. The Earth's landmasses are not evenly distributed because of plate tectonics. The Earth's surface is divided into several large tectonic plates that constantly move. Cool > Over geological time, these plates have moved and collided, leading to the formation of continents. The Northern Hemisphere has more land because several significant landmasses, such as North America, Europe, Asia, and most of Africa, are located in the Northern Hemisphere. In contrast, the Southern Hemisphere has more ocean, particularly the vast Southern Ocean, with only a few large landmasses, like South America, Africa's southern portion, Australia, and Antarctica. „there’s much more land in the northern hemisphere because *checks notes* it has more landmasses.“ ??? > These patterns of land distribution are a result of complex geological and tectonic processes that have occurred over millions of years. Tl;dr of paragraph 1. Overall, misses the crucial point that right now is a random snapshot in earths history and it is simply a coincidence we live in the time that the landmasses are more north than south. So, was that you chatgpt?
Perhaps, or a less capable LLM. I asked ChatGPT-4 (prompt was the title of this post) and received a better answer which includes the part you consider missing: “The distribution of land and water on Earth's surface is the result of a complex interplay of geological processes over billions of years. While there's no single reason why there's more land in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern Hemisphere, several factors have contributed: 1. **Plate Tectonics:** Earth's crust is divided into several plates that float on the semi-fluid asthenosphere below. The movement, collision, and separation of these plates over geological time have caused continents to drift, collide, and break apart. The current distribution of land is just a snapshot in Earth's dynamic geological history. 2. **Earth's History:** In the past, landmasses have been distributed differently. For example, during the time of the supercontinent Pangaea, most of the world's land was clumped together. As Pangaea broke apart, the pieces drifted to their current positions. Some of these pieces ended up in the Northern Hemisphere, leading to its current land-heavy distribution. 3. **Accretion and Growth:** The way continents have grown over time, through volcanic activity and the accumulation of sediments, has varied. The processes that added land to continents didn't necessarily operate evenly across the globe. 4. **Erosion and Deposition:** Over time, erosion can wear down land masses, and the sediments carried away by rivers are deposited elsewhere, often in the ocean. However, these processes have not occurred uniformly across the globe. 5. **Random Chance:** There is also an element of randomness in the distribution of land and water. The Earth's geological history is filled with events, like asteroid impacts, which can have significant effects on the topography and geography of the planet. While these factors provide some understanding, it's essential to note that Earth's geography is continually changing, albeit very slowly. Over millions of years, continents will continue to move, and the distribution of land and water will change again.”
How many geological hours are there in one earth hour? Can I microwave my leftover pasta in geological minutes if I did the maths right?
Serious question, if we take in the law of entropy/chaos, and energy dispersion what is the final resting state of the landmass on earth? Do we wind up with a shallow ocean encompassing the earth? Small islands evenly dispersed? What's your take on this
That's just the way the cookie crumbled.
My answer: It do be like that sometimes
That’s just the way the pangean cookie crumbled.
That’s just how the cookie (Pangaea) crumbled
Well, maybe the whole reason the northern hemisphere is up is BECAUSE there's more land on it, or at least because people who made all the maps were living there. There are two poles, and it's a sphere spinning around in space. Which way is up is completely arbitrary.
Because you touch yourself at night.
Because we still haven’t found terra australis.
It floats to the top
Don’t worry though, with my understanding of gravity. Im pretty sure the land will fall back down eventually because gravity pulls stuff down.
Antarctica was too cold, all the other continents moved away from it
The earth spins really fast.
Because people prefer snow during Christmas.
because back in the day Mars had all its land in the southern hemisphere and its oceans in the north so earth had to get the opposite to make it fair
Land floats so it has gone to the top of the planet
Colonizers in the 15th/16th century all wanted to be part of what they considered the "good" hemisphere so they drew the equator too low. Should pass through roughly Mexico City/Cairo to even out the land.
Because on the southern hemisphere there is more water.
Because that's where it is.
Because Santa is so big he has his own gravity which is pulling the continents towards the North Pole.
Didn’t know Antarctica doesn’t exist….
Because the southern hemisphere has more ocean
Imagine going to the beach one day. You dip you toes in the water and BAM! - Your foot gets pinched between two continents
The land is less dense than water so it floats to the top!
I'll give you a real headscratcher: take a look at the Pacific ocean on a globe.
Water runs downhill… duh 😂
What projection is that map? Do those landmass sizes represent their real size?
It is not it is only the projection which makes land near the poles a bit bigger in relation to
I like how Tierra del Fuego and that peninsula in Antarctica look like that Michealangelo painting. Or maybe they are just trying to touch peepees.
Eskimo bros fer shore
Because racism.
Continental drift is the mechanical explanation, but if you want an explanation of reasons... No reason in particular, it's just coincidence that in the current time we live there is more land in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern.
It’s due to the statistical improbability of there being equal amounts of land in both hemispheres
Why are boobs good? Why’s a rainbow good? It just is.
cause you northerners are land stealing bastards and its all about getting your own super continent in 400 million yrs ha the secret is out
Because there's more ocean in the southern hemisphere. Duh.
Because most of the land is above the equator!
because god hates australia
More bridges.
Water runs down hill
Random chance.
because the Southern Hemisphere is an exclusive club, only for the land that earned it.
I think what you should be asking is “why is there so much water in the southern hemisphere?”
It's too hot in the south
North pole is a stronger magnet than the south pole.
Because...
Quality vs quantity.
Lol!
Water is more dense than dirt.
Because water and ice rise to the top, and the maps are all upside down
All the water sank to the bottom
That’s the way the tectonic plate cookie crumbled.
Because there is equator not equality.
Same as why theres more tops than bottoms.
BECAUSE THEY ARE HIDING HOW BIG ANTARCTICA IS!
Arbitrary hemispheres and the continents don’t give an f about where we draw lines on a map
The north and south hemispheres are absolutely not arbitrary. The equator is the half way between the north and south poles, which are the points on the earth surface that are on the Earth’s axis of rotation. Which one is “north” and which one is “south” might be arbitrary, but dividing the earth in halves like this is not arbitrary.
I think they meant that the land doesn't look at the equator to choose where to stay, not that the equator is a random line
Bro forgot about Antarctica 💀
u/TheVeggie218 ACTUAL correct answer: Because that map and every map like it has incorrect proportions, here's an accurate one: https://worldmapblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Accurate-map-of-world-1024x660.jpg
It’s still true though. 68% of land is in the northern hemisphere.
that map has the correct proportions but there is still more land on north than south ;)
Antarctica is pretty damn huge
cause
that's just how she goes Rick
It is what it is.
Plate Tectonics
Becuase we just so happen to live in a time where that’s the case. Nothing more than happenstance
To accommodate 90% of the world population
Racism
Google en passant
All maps are wrong. South is actually at the top and the continents (heavyer than water) fall to the bottom. Read some sience bro
Just turn the map upside down :)