The Diomedian Antimeridian

[dchalker]

Some here have shown specific experience and interest in optimizing a Bering antimeridian. I have identified my preferred solution, mostly, but there may be room for the tiniest of adjustments.

Situated between Alaska and Siberia lie the Diomede Islands, otherwise known as Yesterday and Tomorrow Island. Between the Diomedes there runs a segment of the International Date Line at 168°58'37" West of Greenwich, my Diomedian Antimeridian, antipodal to the Antidiomedian Meridian at 11°1'23" East. This antimeridian intersects St. Lawrence and Umnak Islands. The resulting central meridian intersects the cities of Nuremberg, Germany and Verona, Italy. Interestingly, this selection creates a natural visual aid connecting latitudes on opposite sides of the map. Artistically, these islands may be embellished with cartouches of two eagles, representing past and future, hindsight and foresight, Yesterday and Tomorrow, alluding to the obvious clock applications.

But... maybe the central meridian at 11°1'23" East isn't the *exact* best option available within the slice on the antipodal Antidiomedian side of the Diomedian gap? This line has existing precedent in time zones and international treaties, but, just for the sake of "getting it right the first time", I'd like to present the question to interested experts: if you were the dictator of earth selecting a new and permanent Antimeridian within the Diomedian Gap, where exactly would you put it? This may include considering a specific geological or monumental target location or observatory on the Antidiomedian side, or whatever.

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[quadibloc]

I would need to know if there is an international border between Russia and the United States on the Diomede Islands. If so, I would have the International Date Line coincide with that.
Of course, if I were dictator of Earth, I would give Siberia, including both Karafuto (the Sakhalin Islands) and any portion of the Diomede Islands that may belong to russia instead of the United States, to Korea. (Korea is a country that would exist after I gave North Korea to South Korea. As for China... well, I would give China to Taiwan, allowing the KMT to rule the Mandarin-speaking areas, and making everyone else independent. Taiwan and Xiamen province could unite to form one country if they wanted to, and of course the DPP would keep Taiwan.)

EDIT: I have now looked it up. Big Diomede Island is Russian, while Little Diomede Island is American. And your date line is between them. I was confused by the shoal south of Little Diomede Island which made the thing look like one bigger island with two lines on it.

[PeteD]

The Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg lies at 11° 4' 32" E and is home to the Erdapfel, the oldest surviving terrestrial globe, which would make a fitting cartography-related landmark. Unfortunately, the antimeridian passes right through Little Diomede rather than between the two islands.

[dchalker]

Good solutions, quad.

The Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg lies at 11 4' 32" E and is home to the Erdapfel, the oldest surviving terrestrial globe, which would make a fitting cartography-related landmark. Unfortunately, the antimeridian passes right through Little Diomede rather than between the two islands.

Oof. I found a few other near-misses. Been looking but nothing is jumping out at me yet, and the existing answer may already be good enough.

[PeteD]

When we discussed this before, I half-jokingly named Tobias's meridian at 11° 33' E as the Oktoberfest meridian. The conversation continued as follows:

And well, I can live with the name “Oktoberfest meridian” although I’m not an Oktoberfest friend at all.

While I do enjoy beer festivals, I'm also not a particular fan of the Oktoberfest, our favourite beer festival being the Erlanger Bergkirchweih at 11° 00' 19" E. Unfortunately, it's not located at an integer number of arcminutes, and using this as your central meridian will cause the eastern tip of St Lawrence Island to be severed (although the cut will go very nicely between the two Diomede Islands).

(emphasis added).

[Milo]

Does someone have a map of the Diomede Islands that shows graticules? From the low-res depiction I have of them in the Blue Marble orbital photos, it looks like the integer 169°W meridian already passes between them, but Wikipedia does claim that this intersects Big Diomede. I still often use an integer 11°E central meridian because it's easy.

Of course, what we consider integer meridians only has any meaning if we still care about keeping the Greenwich meridian in some capacity, which historically is completely arbitrary.

It's questionable if passing through the Diomede Islands is something that's actually worth doing, though, given how close the islands are to each other. It's an interesting political artifact that they belong to different nations, but geographically it's more natural to group them together. Then again, geographically, if you ignore modern politics, it's more natural to interrupt the world through the Atlantic instead of the Pacific...

Also, the Diomede Islands are unlikely to even be visible on a world map scale, unlike St. Lawrence Island.

Here's a zoomed-in map of the Bering region, showing the Diomede Islands and St. Lawrence Island in almost as much resolution as my source data is capable of doing without pixelization. G.Projector doesn't support drawing graticules finer than 1°, but this is an equirectangular projection, so you can locate intermediate coordinates just by pixel-counting if you want to.

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Here is the same region in azimuthal equidistant projection, showing that even over a region this small, the curvature of the graticules is still noticeable. Unfortunately, G.Projector doesn't support graticule labels in this projection, but they're clearly the same ones.

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Of course, if I were dictator of Earth, I would give Siberia, including both Karafuto (the Sakhalin Islands) and any portion of the Diomede Islands that may belong to russia instead of the United States, to Korea.

Would you also give Korea Manchuria? It makes little sense to me to give them any part of Siberia without also giving them Manchuria, since that leads to a disconnected territory. If I wanted to give Sakhalin to someone that isn't Russia, Japan would make more sense.

Also, all of Sibera? That's a lot of land.

Do you just really like Korea?

(If I were the dictator of Earth, I wouldn't necessarily care to split up Russia. Getting rid of Putin would be a high priority, but that doesn't necessarily mean that whoever succeeds him can't still rule the same territory. If I did want to split Siberia off from European Russia - which, I'll note, does not do anything to suggest they don't have a right to Ukraine, since Ukraine is in Europe - it makes the most sense to me to either make Siberia an independent Turkic/Tungusic native-run country, or give it to North Asian countries like Kazakhstan or Mongolia. The Mongols did rule Siberia once in the past, though I can't say I approve of their methods... Practically though, today the vast majority of the inhabitants of Siberia are Russian, and I don't feel like evicting them just because their government is misbehaving.)

[dchalker]

While I do enjoy beer festivals, I'm also not a particular fan of the Oktoberfest, our favourite beer festival being the Erlanger Bergkirchweih at 11° 00' 19" E. Unfortunately, it's not located at an integer number of arcminutes, and using this as your central meridian will cause the eastern tip of St Lawrence Island to be severed (although the cut will go very nicely between the two Diomede Islands).

I certainly don't claim to be the first to consider the gap, but the Googler suggests that the terms didn't exist before (Diomedian Antimeridian, nor Antidiomedian), so I'm not sure if anybody noticed the other existing line or the syncretic opportunity to connect timekeeping and mythology. Or maybe they just didn't want to divide the world with "Zeus-minded cunning" (etymology).

Of course, what we consider integer meridians only has any meaning if we still care about keeping the Greenwich meridian in some capacity, which historically is completely arbitrary.

Exactly. We're envisioning a total control scenario. ("Dictator" leads to better conversation than game dev, no?) Good thoughts. I think I'd fully dissolve any existing federation. There can't be other federal constitutions and loyalties under a global Federation of Earth dictatorship, so every other government has to be harmonized. I'd start with a cultural region map to define my Realms, then subdivide those into states according to environmental concerns like watersheds and other natural boundaries, or preserving existing lines where appropriate.

New name for North America: Hanunah (the turtle god of Seneca mythology)
New name for South America: Latina Rica

It's questionable if passing through the Diomede Islands is something that's actually worth doing, though, given how close the islands are to each other.

Yeah, the choice depends on design objectives. From a pure cartography standpoint, it may make them harder to see unless the map is large, BUT splitting Yesterday and Tomorrow creates an opportunity to physically combine the map and clock into one thing that has built-in mythological symbolism and synchronizes cartography with time.

Presently, people learn to read time on a radial clock face. Used with my Continental map design, this change supports a type of clock design that can merge both, a radial clock and a linear sun clock. Radial clocks work well with time zones so that they "look like noon" when it is noon, no matter where you are. A linear clock is literally just a progress bar for the day; that's how you intuitively read it. It makes the best sense when superimposed over a map such that the noonline aligns with the region currently experiencing midday. Some permanent calendars eliminate time zones and put everyone on the same UTC, which would really screw up the utility of radial clocks and make a linear clock more suitable. (like Hank-Henry, or my fav Sym454). It is pretty disruptive to adopt such a fixed calendar without a linear UTC solar clock. You read time by where the line is on the map, combined with knowing your location. This change improves them by putting "Yesterday" and "Tomorrow" in the right place, making a physical implementation much more worthwhile and aesthetic.

[Milo]

Exactly. We're envisioning a total control scenario.

Even in a total control scenario, changing the prime meridian used for defining coordinates (rather than the central meridian used for any particular map) wouldn't necessarily be easy. Large amounts of existing data uses the current international standard for the prime meridian, and changing it would cause interoperability problems that would be a hassle for many people. Even if I have mind control powers that make people happy to do the extra work to fix resulting issues without complaint, they still have to spend time actually doing the work, and as supreme dictator I can probably think of more useful things for them to do.

("Dictator" leads to better conversation than game dev, no?)

Conveniently, many games allow you to play as a world dictator, or at least have the goal of becoming one

I'd start with a cultural region map to define my Realms, then subdivide those into states according to environmental concerns like watersheds and other natural boundaries, or preserving existing lines where appropriate.

The thing is, anything that has been a sovereign nation for long enough tends to start perceiving itself as culturally distinct from its neighbors, regardless of its roots...

New name for North America: Hanuna (the turtle god of Seneca mythology)
New name for South America: Latina Rica

Interesting that you'd use a pre-European-contact native name for North America, but then name South America after its colonial culture.

Especially since South America actually had a single native civilization that is far better known than any other cultures on the continent (although I don't know offhand if they explored widely enough to be aware of the extent of the continent they lived on, or have a name for it as distinct from other landmasses), while North America has a whole bunch of native tribes without an obvious way of picking a "most important" one.

Presently, people learn to read time on a radial clock face. Used with my Continental map design, this change supports a type of clock design that can merge both, a radial clock and a linear right-to-left sun clock. Radial clocks work well with time zones so that they "look like noon" when it is noon, no matter where you are. A linear clock makes no sense, really, unless superimposed over a map such that the noonline aligns with the region currently experiencing midday.

And this is why I prefer digital clocks.

It is pretty disruptive to adopt such a fixed calendar without a linear UTC clock.

If we're presuming that we're allowed to change the prime meridian, why are we presuming that we're still using the present-day definition of "time zone zero"?

Again, the only reason Big Diomede and Little Diomede use different time zones is because one belongs to Russia and the other belongs to the United States. If we dissolve national boundaries, then I think the native inhabitants (or ex-inhabitants, since the USSR evicted the natives of Big Diomede due to Cold War politics) of both islands, belonging to a shared Iñupiaq culture rather than the majority cultures of their controlling nations, would find it far more convenient to use the same time zone.

[dchalker]

would find it far more convenient to use the same time zone.

Oh, sorry, I guess I didn't make clear the linear clock doesn't do time zones. The whole Earth is at 38% of the progress bar being completed at the same time, so to speak.

[Milo]

Oh, sorry, I guess I didn't make clear the linear clock doesn't do time zones.

If there are no time zones, then there is no international date line, and there is no reason to display a map on your clock because the time is the same everywhere.