The Eastern Hemisphere is the half of the
planet Earth which is east of the
prime meridian (which crosses
Greenwich,
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
,
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...
) and west of the
antimeridian (which crosses the
Pacific Ocean and relatively little land from pole to pole). It is also used to refer to
Afro-Eurasia (
Africa and
Eurasia) and
Australia, in contrast with the
Western Hemisphere, which includes mainly
North and
South America. The Eastern Hemisphere may also be called the "Oriental Hemisphere", and may in addition be used in a
cultural or
geopolitical sense as a synonym for the "
Old World."
Geography
The almost perfect circle (the earth is an
oblate spheroid that is fatter around the equator), drawn with a line, demarcating the Eastern and Western Hemispheres must be an arbitrarily decided and published convention, unlike the
Equator (an imaginary line encircling
Earth, equidistant from its
poles), which divides the
Northern
Northern may refer to the following:
Geography
* North, a point in direction
* Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe
* Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States
* Northern Province, Sri Lanka
* Northern Range, a r ...
and
Southern
Southern may refer to:
Businesses
* China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China
* Southern Airways, defunct US airline
* Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US
* Southern Airways Express, M ...
Hemispheres. The
prime meridian at 0°
longitude and the
antimeridian, at 180° longitude, are the conventionally accepted boundaries, since they divide eastern longitudes from western longitudes. This convention was established in 1884 at the
International Meridian Conference held in
Washington, D.C. where the
standard time concepts of
Canadian railroad engineer Sir
Sandford Fleming were adopted. The Hemispheres agreed do not correspond with exact continents. Portions of
Western Europe,
West Africa,
Oceania, and extreme northeastern
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...
are in the Western Hemisphere, divorcing it from the continents which form the touchstone for most geopolitical constructs of "the East" and "the West".
Consequently, the meridians of
20°W and the diametrically opposed
160°E are often used outside of matters of physics and navigation, which includes all of the European and African mainlands, but also includes a small portion of northeast
Greenland (typically reckoned as part of
North America) and excludes more of eastern Russia and Oceania (e.g.,
New Zealand). Prior to the global adoption of standard time, numerous
prime meridians were decreed by various countries where time was defined by local noon (thereby, local ).
The center of the Eastern Hemisphere is located in the
Indian Ocean at the intersection of the equator and the
90th meridian east, 910 km west of
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...
in the
Ninety East Ridge. The nearest land is
Simeulue Island at .
The land mass of the Eastern Hemisphere is larger than that of the Western Hemisphere and has a wide variety of
habitats.
Demographics
82-88% of
humans live in the Eastern Hemisphere, and 12-18% in the Western Hemisphere.
How Much of Humanity is in Your Hemisphere? - Brilliant Maps
/ref>
See also
* East Antarctica
* Eastern world
* Western Hemisphere
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Hemispheres of Earth