Tired of people? Discover Point Nemo, the most isolated place on Earth

It's known as Point Nemo or the 'maritime pole of inaccessibility'. With a distance of 2,688 kilometers from the nearest island, it is the furthest point in the ocean from any land.

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It was nicknamed after Captain Nemo, the famous anti-hero of Jules Verne's novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The name means 'no one' in Latin, a fitting name for a place so rarely visited by humans.

22 million miles of solitude

The point lies in the South Pacific Ocean, at the center of a 22-million-square-kilometer disk with no land mass. By way of comparison, this size is even greater than that of the former USSR. Beyond this extremely extensive perimeter are a number of smaller territories.

Among these is Ducie Island, the nearest to the north. It is an atoll belonging to the Pitcairn Islands of the United Kingdom. To the northeast is Motu Nui, a four-hectare islet belonging to the Easter Island archipelago. To the south, the first land from the point is Maher Island, at the tip of Antarctica.

Of course, these are mostly uninhabited regions, and as few sea routes cross this part of the Pacific, humans are virtually non-existent. As such, it is often said that the closest people to Point Nemo are not on Earth.

The crew of the International Space Station (ISS), which orbits between 330 and 410 kilometers above the surface of our planet, regularly finds itself at a relatively shorter distance from the maritime pole of inaccessibility.

And speaking of Space, NASA and other space agencies use Point Nemo as a landmark to guide deorbiting space objects. Satellites are sent there to minimize the risk of damage from debris. Practical.

A relatively recent location

The location of Point Nemo was long debated. It wasn't until the advent of modern technology that its position was finally precisely defined. According to Escales magazine, 'it lies at latitude 48° 52' 31'' South and longitude 123° 23' 33'' West'.

It was discovered in 1992 by engineer Hrvoje Lukatela. But he didn't launch an expedition to identify it. His find was the result of complex calculations and algorithms performed using state-of-the-art software. According to the specialist, it seems unlikely that the point will move significantly in the potentially foreseeable future. The only possibility is that the point will move slightly due to coastal erosion.

For space agencies, this purely maritime zone is of great interest, and for good reason: it can be used to drop equipment at the end of a mission, without risk of injuring people. In astronomical jargon, this is known as the 'Uninhabited Ocean Zone of the South Pacific'.