… That Australia will move northwards by 1.8m (5.9 feet) on New Year’s Day 2017? It’s not related to an apocalyptic shift in plate tectonics! However the continental drift does play a role.
The Australian Plate is moving about 7 centimeters (2.8 inches) northwards every single year. This motion has accumulated over the decades to produce a significant discrepancy between local coordinates on maps and global coordinates in digital navigation systems used by satellites.
At present, this difference amounts to an error of 1.5 meters (4.9 feet). This is enough to cause a problem to anything in Australia that uses GPS-like systems, including smartphones and vehicles.
“If you want to start using driverless cars, accurate map information is fundamental,” Dan Jaksa, a member of Geoscience Australia, told BBC News. “We have tractors in Australia starting to go around farms without a driver, and if the information about the farm doesn’t line up with the coordinates coming out of the navigation system there will be problems.”
In order to stave off a grim future where autonomous tractors plough into helpless farm animals by mistake, the nation’s local coordinates will jump northwards at the start of next year. By 2020, the inexorable march of plate tectonics will catch up to the adjustment, and both the analogue and digital coordinate sets will match up for the first time since 1994, when the local coordinate system was last updated.
Brace yourself, China, we are coming… slowly but surely…
Read more about it here…Read more about it here…
Ha! I love this kind of thing – technology is getting so good that continental drift is screwing it up!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hehehe! Funny, hey?!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I know – like you say – China here we come! lol
LikeLiked by 1 person
Does this mean I have to get a new world map? Maybe I can pencil it in. What’s the scale for 5 feet on a standard wall map?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hehehehe… I’m trying to figure it out too…
LikeLike
Oh, cool! As soon as you hit Europe I will run over and hug you, Sandra 😄
LikeLiked by 1 person
Okay, it’s a deal 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes ✋
LikeLiked by 1 person
Very interesting! Yeah, better get that coordinates match up! Poor animals and tractors!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hehehehe… honestly on a couple of our roadtrips we had to giggle as the GPS showed us driving next to the road…
LikeLiked by 1 person
That must have been really weird! LOL
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe Down Under will eventually become Up Over?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hahaha… Swap it all around 😉
LikeLike