Santa

Is there a scientific reason why the north pole is at the top and the south pole at the bottom?

Or is it just because most of the land is in the northern hemisphere and we don't think of ourselves as hanging upside down. Why aren't they just called the poles and maps have display of earth from both south pole at top perspective and north pole at top perspective. It's just relative to un-oriented space, isn't it?

Public Comments

1. well, im not a huge fan of science, but i get a grade A in it every year. we know how they're there but not why. science only teaches us how, not why. and the poles are eventually going to reverse due to magnetic fields. no, im not a nerd, i just have to pay attention. hope it helped.
2. at some point, it was decided that the "top" was north, and the "bottom" was south. It was an arbitrary decision, but one that helped (and still helps) people orient themselves
3. There's no scientific reason. It's a cultural arrogance/dominance thing. Europe conquered the world and supposedly made the first maps. There is an Australian professor who wrote an article in the National Geographic in the late 1980's about how arrogant it is that maps are usually printed with north at the top. The National Geographic Society printed a political map of the world with south at the top. Space isn't un-oriented. Mankind projects Earth's coordinate system into space. The Earth's latitude and longitude system is based in astronomy. The ecliptic of the solar system is inclined at 62 or 63 degrees to the equatorial plane of the Milky Way galaxy. EDIT: The geographic poles are NOT going to flip. The magnetic poles of the Earth's magnetic field are already flipping.