...and all the way up, if you consider Earth as an island in the lake of the solar system, which is of course an island in the galaxy, which is an island in the local group, etc.
> if you consider Earth as an island in the lake of the solar system
I mean, "if" is doing a lot of work there! Earth is not an island because it's not surrounded by water. Poetically, sure, it's a nice metaphor, but it's only a metaphor.
Earth is not sitting in a body of water. Maybe I'm moving goalposts but c'mon now, this is not what people typically mean by an "island"!
Similarly, my home is not an island even though the air around it contains water vapor. Nor is my home an island because there are some puddles on the street outside.
"Until 2020,[15] Vulcan Point was an island that existed in Main Crater Lake on Volcano Island in Lake Taal on Luzon in the Philippines.[16] Main Crater Lake evaporated during the 2020 Taal Volcano eruption,[15] but the water in Taal Lake has returned and has a new island. Vulcan Point became a peninsula"
The linked website is outdated (the maps should be a signal) the last Lake in the list doesn't exist anymore
> Up until the 2020 eruption of Taal Volcano there was a crater lake on Volcano Island. It was known as Yellow Lake and Main Crater Lake and contained its own small island, Vulcan Point. Vulcan Point was thought to be one of few third-order islands in the world.
Yeah, I actually thought it had been posted more recently (in the last 5 years) with a bigger discussion thread, but I couldn't find it. Interesting regardless!
I'm getting to taken to https://www.elbruz.org/blank.html when trying to visit the link, anyone else? I thought it just didn't like me using a VPN at first, but it does it even without that. Might have gotten the hug of death.
My geography teacher used to say: “On small islands you won’t find rivers. There is a mnemotechnic verse to remember that: ‘On small islands you won’t find rivers’”
Don’t know if it is even true. Stuck with me to this day, if I ever meet him again, I will ask about whether small islands can have lakes or not.
So far the smallest island I've found with something people describe as a "river" is Suðuroy, in the Faroe Islands, at 163.7 km2 (63.2 sq mi).
"the great cirques of upland central Suðuroy where the hilltops reach an altitude of 574 m, but overlook and to a degree shelter the summer grazings of Hovsdalur (altitude about 200 m). The whole is drained by the Hovsá, a salmon and trout river. Freshwater is ample here as everywhere in the Faroe Islands, with rivers, count-less streams and an average annual precipitation of 1334 mm (Søgaard, 1996)." - https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10745-005-474...
Is Suðuroy a "small island"? Perhaps! I found a larger island which Wikipedia describes as small.
"Rinca, also known as Rincah, Rindja, Rintja and Pintja, is a small island near Komodo and Flores island, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, within the West Manggarai Regency", at 198 km2 (76 sq mi), says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinca .
This is stretching it but this island (Poro Island - 96.6 km2) seems to have a "stream" and a waterfall into what looks like a pond.
I wouldn't really call it a river by any means though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poro_Island
Hmm. It appears to be artificial. The Wikipedia entry says "an artificial open channel" and 'Visit To Places Of Historic Interest In The Aberdeen Area Of Hong Kong Island' from 1967 (at https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/23890119.pdf) says:
"It was up this valley that Sir George Staunton, the eminent sinologue and Third Commissioner in the Amherst Embassy to Peking in 1816，strolled from the Aberdeen anchorage the following year to visit the village 一 in so doing to give his name to Staunton Creek now, 150 years later, being reclaimed from the sea."
I would not call that a river.
On the other hand, while researching the above I found that Lantau Island, Hong Kong at 147.16 km2 (56.82 sq mi) has the Tung Chung River.
I interpreted the joke being that a mnemotechnic is like a river, poetry flowing, so you won't find one for knowledge that is already concisely formulated, like a small island.
I thought this was going to be about "Moose Boulder," whose existence was (rather unconvincingly, I think) "disproven" a couple years ago, and which begs the interesting question about how we define "Largest Lake."
I thought the same; the alleged Moose Boulder is in my general back yard area and I've thought about doing some "citizen science" on my next trip to Isle Royale.
Anyone know what the largest moon of a moon of planet would be?
Around a star around a binary star around a massive star? (Star systems can be embedded. We know of double binaries.)
Seriously, it would be interesting for someone to study how deeply nested a system might go, and be plausibly stable, from what we know of solar system formation and dynamics.
> Anyone know what the largest moon of a moon of planet would be?
I had to think about this for a minute. At first thought a moon of a moon didn’t seem to be possible as the gravity of the moon’s planet would certainly make an orbit around a moon unstable. But apparently if the moon is large enough, and separated enough from its planet, it can in theory have a moon. Saturn’s moons Titan and Iapetus, Jupiter’s moon Callisto, and Earth’s Moon would be capable of hosting submoons. [1]
> At first thought a moon of a moon didn’t seem to be possible as the gravity of the moon’s planet would certainly make an orbit around a moon unstable.
No, that's not true. Moons can have moons with stable orbits. Not every moon can, though.
If you think about it, the Moon already orbits Earth which orbits Sun.
Our Moon could have satellites but the issue is that it is lumpy. It is not uniform in density and this causes huge gravitational anomalies which prevent long term stable orbits. If Moon was uniform it could have stable orbits.
Having fun imagining how someone would go about researching this. Make a Wikipedia crawler that looks for lists of lakes on each island. For each lake, read its wikipedia article to find each island. Repeat.
This reminds me of a fun computer science class back in university called "Programming Challenges", which followed the Springer book of the same name. Over two or three weeks, we had to solve one problem every day. That was really fun! Edit: Forgot to mention that the recursive "lake on an island in a lake ..." problem was one of the excercises.
How are "beaches" defined? Because Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore has a "beach" named 12 mile beach. And, having paddled next to it the whole way, it certainly qualifies as a beach in my mind.
But that only has "...e å, å i åa ä e ö" -- not the bit about "å i öa ä e å" from that tongue-twisters page, which seems to be a later addition. Ungrammatical, too: I'm sure even värmlänningar would say "på öa", not "i öa".
(Oh, and "e" is of course a contraction of the indeterminate article "en", a/an.)
Further:
e: dialectal version of "det", i.e. "it"
öa, åa: adding an a on the end of a noun is a dialectal way of expressing "the 'ö'" and "the 'å'", respectively.
mentioned in the other comment is understandable to a swedish speaker, but it's written half-phonetically. The words i, å, and ö are properly spelled, however.
Well it's gotta be landlocked, and it'll probably be small.
Wikipedia reveals that it's... Lesotho. Sure enough, landlocked and small. I'd never have guessed it, because I didn't realize that part of South Africa was a big mountainous plateau.
Nepal evidently has some quite low points, as it's nowhere near the top of the list. Bottoms out at 59m/194ft.
Wikipedia entry [0] aruges there is only one "Islands in lakes on islands in lakes on islands in lakes" in Canada but this article points to another one in Philippines.
> The largest lake on an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island is said to be "Lake Matano" located on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia.
> Lake Matano is the largest lake in Sulawesi and the ninth deepest lake in the world, with a maximum depth of 590 meters (1,940 feet). The lake is located on the island of Sulawesi, which is itself part of the country of Indonesia. Within the lake, there is an island called "Pulo Mahamba" which has a lake within it called "Lake Towuti". And within Lake Towuti, there is another island called "Una Una" which has a crater lake within it. This crater lake is considered to be the largest lake on an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island.
Also tried the largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island?
> The largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island is not officially documented, and it is unclear if such an island actually exists.
> The concept of nested lakes and islands can create a potentially endless chain, but eventually, the size and feasibility of such geographic features become implausible. As such, it is not practical to identify the largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island, as it may not exist.
> However, the previously mentioned example of Lake Matano in Sulawesi, Indonesia, is an actual location that fits the criteria of nested lakes and islands. Within the lake, there is an island called "Pulo Mahamba" which has a lake within it called "Lake Towuti". And within Lake Towuti, there is another island called "Una Una" which has a crater lake within it, but there is no known island within that lake.
> Lake Matano is the largest lake in Sulawesi and the ninth deepest lake in the world, with a maximum depth of 590 meters (1,940 feet). The lake is located on the island of Sulawesi, which is itself part of the country of Indonesia. Within the lake, there is an island called "Pulo Mahamba" which has a lake within it called "Lake Towuti". And within Lake Towuti, there is another island called "Una Una" which has a crater lake within it. This crater lake is considered to be the largest lake on an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island.
The article states that Greenland is the largest island. This may conflict with a common belief that Australia is an island; as an Australian, allow me to explain (it’s actually quite interesting!)
Australia is a continent, so it cannot be an island by definition, as islands are defined as 1. completely surrounded by water, and 2. smaller than continents. It may seem like a silly technical objection at first, but it’s actually necessary to stipulate that continents cannot be islands, as otherwise the largest island would be the Americas, or perhaps mainland Asia + Africa + Europe.
Perhaps the other reason Australia seems like an island (while eg the Americas does not) is that it looks mostly convex on a global map. Unfortunately, we can’t make use of this intuition in a formal way because of the coastline paradox.
I don't know if you went to a French-speaking school in Belgium, but I was told the same thing in a French school. The French "continent" certainly refers to a large mass of land and its surrounding islands [1]. Hence, the continent is Oceania rather than Australia.
That's how we learned it in middle school and beyond here in the US, but the Australia question boiled down to "yeah, technically it's an island, but are you really going to start your conversations about Australia with a bunch of quibbling around islands v. continents?".
40 years ago in Spain 5 continents only, no Antarctica, my guess is as no one was living there why worry about it. Don't know if it has changed, I'll ask my son.
North and South America are on different tectonic plates, while Europe and most of Asia are on a single plate. If anything, the geological definition of continents seems to support separate Americas and a unified Eurasia.
The best argument for separating the Americas is probably the existence of the Darien Gap. I’m not sure there is more inhospitable route in a populated area anywhere in the world.
The continents are defined geographically and culturally, not geologically.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent points out how they "are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria" and lists "several ways of distinguishing the continents", with the 7-continent model, two different 6-continent models. It also mentions the "four-continent model consisting of Afro-Eurasia, America, Antarctica, and Australia", as well as how there were only three discrete landmasses present during the Pleistocene ice ages, when the Bering Strait was instead land.
You can see the cultural influence in:
> In the English-speaking countries, geographers often use the term Oceania to denote a geographical region which includes most of the island countries and territories in the Pacific Ocean, as well as the continent of Australia.
> In some non-English-speaking countries, such as China, Poland, and Russia, Oceania is considered a proper continent because their equivalent word for "continent" has a rather different meaning which can be interpreted as "a major division of land including islands" (leaning towards a region) rather than "land associated with a large landmass" (leaning towards a landmass).
They are not defined by geology nor continental plates. For one, the word and current use is far older than our first glimmers of understanding plate tectonics. https://www.etymonline.com/word/continent says the meaning in the 1550s was "continuous tract of land" and by the 1610s became "one of the large land masses of the globe".
> The definition of a continent is a continuous expanse of land.
That is both vague and by no means the only definition of a continent. A continent is basically defined culturally - different places say there are 4,5,6 or 7 continents.
The closest to a good scientific definition is 'the largest landmass of a continental plate' (which would include Australia but not greenland, but then arguably India, east Africa, Arabia and Central America are really also on their own plates)
Perhaps the most challenging problem with the plate definition is that it would place northern Honshu and all of Hokkaido in North America. Treating the Caribbean, India and Arabia as continents is basically consistent with how we talk about them anyway.
I like having a clear definition like basing it on continental plates, though a map of the plates seems to raise its own set of questions. How small is too small of a plate to count? What of parts of what we call continents that are actually on a different plate?
I mean, Pluto is definitely still a planet in the cultural imagination. There can be exceptions to rules. Even if there are some exoplanets that resemble Pluto, we can still say that Pluto is a planet and those other nameless things aren't.
I cannot understand why the cultural understanding of planet wasn't respected, while still making whatever nuanced distinction scientists wanted.
My solution would have been:
Planet = any standalone body in space, formed around a star or brown dwarf, large enough for gravity to mold it into a sphere, but not massive enough to enable any fusion. (i.e. exclude stars and brown dwarfs).
Then:
Major planet: Planet that has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit. We have 8 of these.
Minor planet: Planet that has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit. This would include Pluto, Ceres, and many extra-Pluto bodies.
The current scientific definition is tortured. I.e. a "dwarf planet" is not a "planet", which is just unintuitive nomenclature grammatically, as well as violating the regular use of the word "planet".
I wish science would come up with a better definition. Just like we no longer have Pluto as a planet (there were other definitions they considered with different results - the important thing is a useful definition)
That won’t happen, largely because continents are BS scientifically but useful colloquially and in geography. Politics also uses them too, but the usefulness of that I’ll leave as an exercise for others.
If you want science, you want plate tectonics and geography focused around the boundaries of plates and volcanic science. If you want to know what a continent is, whatever model you were taught in school is good enough for government work. The important thing is to know what that land over yonder is if you’re on a boat.
So - in Swedish, "kontenent" is a "continuous expanse of land". But a "världsdel" (which translates to "part of the world" roughly) is I guess "region". So - if you look at the table, "Europe" and "Asia" are both individual "världsdel", but they are one "kontinent" Eurasia. This certainly flies in the face of what I was taught in school - Europe was definitely a continent, as was Asia. Also notice, Oceana is a "världsdel", Australia is a "kontinent". But Google translates both words to "continent" in English, but the words are different.. kontinent is "geographical", but världsdel is "cultural".
"continuous expanse of land" would imply at least that any island is its own continent, but perhaps even that each bank of any river (while water is in it) would divide continents. So that does not seem right.
Wikipedia actually contradicts you in the first two sentences in the "Continent" entry [0]:
> A continent is any of several large geographical regions. Continents are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria.
If you define the continent as a continuous expanse of land, then the Americas and Afro-Eurasia are continents, albeit divided by the Panama Ithsmus, Suez Ithsmus, and...Ural Mountains?
Panama and Suez are divided by a canal, but those are artificial with a floor higher than sea level. If you stopped maintenance on the canals for a geologic blink of an eye and it would return to a land bridge, but it's narrow...I can see arguments both ways.
However, the only argument for calling Europe one continent and Asia a different continent is that Eurasia would be too big if it were a continent. Afro-Eurasia is right out!
Something does not add up for me here. If you say that Australia is a continent, but Oceania a region.. then how is New Zealand classified?
Shouldnt it count as a continent too? (What is probably wrong)
I think all those things are quite cultural: after all Europe and Asia are connected, arguably with Africa too. Same for both Americas which could be counted as one big thing. On a side note does: Panama canal work as a real divide between both Ameican continents? Similar question for Suez Canal
> Something does not add up for me here. If you say that Australia is a continent, but Oceania a region.. then how is New Zealand classified? Shouldnt it count as a continent too?
Why would it have to? Oceania is a region that consists of one continent and a bunch of islands, done, problem solved. There's nothing that says "a region" can only consist of continents or islands, is there?
Ok so the bulk of Great Britain is a continent, Northern and the Republic of Ireland form a continent, the Isle of Wight is a continent, ...?
Or for the NA readers: the bulk of NA&SA form a single continent, not two, Russia and continental Europe sometimes join it, Hawaii is a continent, ...?
We learned this in Chile as well, Oceania is as Asia is as America. Also that no country is at the same time a continent. Are Aussies taught that their country is the actual continent?
Not really. If an American doesn't know where Oceania is (and they likely don't), then they are left to assume that Australia is the continent, not an island.
Hence, I was providing a counter-example to your dubious claim that "Americans know of islands and continents". Come to think of it... what do you even mean by that? What does it mean to "know of islands and continents"?
I know, I know. English speaking countries refer to the continent as "the Americas" rather than America, as the rest of the planet does but, then, the rest of the planet refers to the "United States of America" as the "US" and (normally) not as "America" .
Now seriously, America is a given name for the whole continent (with Noth America and South America as its two subcontinents) and was never meant to be used as the name of any one of its 35 countries.
Many in the EU are often doing the same chauvinistic thing, refering to themselves as "Europe" forgetting that there are 23 European countries that are not part of the EU. That case is slightly (just slightly) less annoying because at least is 27 EU European countries vs 23 non EU European countries, so at least they can claim to be the majority of countries. US case is one country vs. 34, so objectively even more absurd.
This comment seems confused. In English, "the Americas" isn't a continent nor are North America and South America "sub-continents"; rather, North America is a continent, South America is a continent, "the Americas" refers unambiguously to the collection of both continents, and "America" refers unambiguously to the United States of America (and "American" refers unambiguously to a US citizen). The only chauvinism occurs when speakers of other languages insist that the English language adopt their model of continents and the corresponding toponyms and demonyms (for example, many Spanish speakers use "Americano" to refer to inhabitants of the Americas, and since that word looks like "American" in English, many of these Spanish speakers believe English speakers should modify the meaning of "American" to mirror their "Americano").
Using "Europe" to refer to the EU member states in English is different because "Europe" in English traditionally refers to the entire continent and referring to the EU as "Europe" introduces ambiguity. I don't think this ambiguity is a significant problem and I wouldn't call it "chauvinism" but perhaps I could be convinced otherwise.
> "America" refers unambiguously to the United States of America
When people say "Columbus discovered America", it most certainly is referring to the entire landmass and surrounding islands (he technically landed in the Bahamas).
By the way, one thing I always wondered? Are Canadians annoyed by that usage, or more or less accepted that they're not "American" in English? (I would especially appreciate if a Canadian shared their thoughts about this)
My two cents is US people are the ones who have an unusual take on the word "America". Outside the US, it's not very idiomatic to call the country "America", or even "USA". "US" is more common (and in both Spanish and Portuguese, it's almost always called "Estados Unidos").
The term "american" is mainstream both in Canada and elsewhere. I imagine that's probably at least partly a function of "unitedstatesman" being too much of a mouthful. (BTW, if you think that's a ridiculous word, in portuguese "estadounidense" is an actual word, albeit with a connotation of being something a "woke" person might say).
> many Spanish speakers use "Americano" to refer to inhabitants of the Americas, and since that word looks like "American" in English, many of these Spanish speakers believe English speakers should modify the meaning of "American" to mirror their "Americano"
Spanish speakers, or, rather, the Crown of Castille created the word "America" and "americanos" to refer to the new continent and their people. English speakers adopted the same word, but with a different meaning.
Not saying that it's wrong for US people to refer to their country by anh word that they chose. They are free to do so. But it is useful, I think, to understand that people for other countries of America, who call themselves "americanos" because that's what they are, can be surprised to be told they are not "Americans", even though they are "americanos". I guess it's confusing for them, at the very least.
Just imagine that Colombians started to call their country "America" and when you went there they would insist that you are not American ("americano"). I guess you would not be amused. I don't know.
I'm not "americano", but European, so it doesn't really affect me. Just trying to give some context to better understand others. Peace! :-)
That's what I wrote, that in English speaking countries you refer to the whole continent as "the Americas".
The name "America", though, was given to the whole "New World", which is what we now call "America", the continent. British started using the name just for what is now the US, so in English speaking countries, the usage is different nowdays. In other countries "America" continues to be used for the whole continent (it is still considered one conti nent, not two).
In her 1961 book The United States and the Southwest Pacific, American author Clinton Hartley Grattan commented that, "the use of the word Oceania to cover Australia, New Zealand, and the [Pacific] islands now has a slightly old-fashioned flavor."
When people use things like this I try to catch it. This isn't a reasoned argument. It's meant to have the reader or hearer feel a certain way to change minds.
Why do you interpret her reporting that the term is "old-fashioned" as an argument that it shouldn't be used? She's not making an argument, just remarking on the term.
Language is only useful if we all agree on a common meaning for it. If you use old fashioned language I may still recognize it, but it is still wrong: you need to update your language to whatever is current (this does change!) so that we continue to understand each other.
Maybe I can't define why it is old fashioned, but if it is old fashioned it is wrong. I would hope that people who better understand the details have a better definition of the terms in use and could apply it, but all I know is your usage is old fashioned. (Note, the above doesn't preclude the idea that I'm wrong and the language is current, merely that we both need to do more research and should be more careful in this area until/unless we do!)
> Language is only useful if we all agree on a common meaning for it.
Is it possible to agree on a common meaning for language using the language for which we are attempting to agree on the common meaning? On a logical level, I think I reject such an idea, although I would be fascinated in an argument that suggests such a thing would be possible.
> all agree
Information theory suggests that commonly used symbols should be short and rare symbols should be long. Any subgrouping of people will encounter scenarios requiring different ideas to be discussed at different frequencies. Jargon differing amongst people is to be expected and is what at least I have observed. I also reject 'all agree' on an information theory level.
> Language is only useful
And finally on a personal note. I generally misunderstand what most people are talking about most of the time. I think of it in terms of being weakly immune to peer pressure, but the other side of the coin is that I have a hard time keeping up with whatever group I'm a part of. And vice versa, I often say things that others quite obviously misunderstand.
However, I still find language useful. Even when there is no agreement on common meaning. Even when jargon necessarily forms differently between groups (and often even between individuals). Even when we try imperfectly to define language basing it upon itself. Using old fashioned language (or simply uncommonly agreed upon language) isn't 'still wrong' even if recognized. It is, I assert, the only way language can even be.
There are schools of thought with 4, 5, 6, or 7 continents, but all of them consider Australia a continent, and Oceania a region, at least according to Wikipedia; though "some geographers group the Australian continental landmass with other islands in the Pacific Ocean into one 'quasi-continent' called Oceania."
> In school in Belgium, we learned that Oceania is the continent and not Australia. So for us, would Australia then be the largest island after all?
No, whether you call the continent “Australia” or “Oceania”, the land mass that makes up the entirety of the mainland of it is, ipso facto, not an island, and neither is the country occupying the entirety of that landmass and some adjacent islands (though, of course, it contains several islands.)
> In school in Belgium, we learned that Oceania is the continent and not Australia. So for us, would Australia then be the largest island after all?
How weird. (So it's not only Chilean schools that are idiosyncratic in this regard.) To the rest of us, the actual continent -- you know, the biggest contiguous landmass in the region -- is called Australia. Maybe you're just translating Erdteil (Ger; whatever the corresponding concept is in French or Flemish) to the English "continent", and mistranslating too literally? In English "continent" is the land mass, which is definitely Australia. Oceania, as a whole "Erdteil", is more than a continent; it's the sum of the continent of Australia and a whole bunch of islands. (Possibly most of them situated on the same continental shelf? Or not, Idunno.)
French:
> On retrouve ainsi certains systèmes de continents qui considèrent l'Europe et l'Asie comme deux continents, alors que l'Eurasie ne forme qu'une étendue de terre. -- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent
If stuff that is just one actual literal continent can be called two "Erdteile" since forever, another "Erdteil" can consist of a continent plus some other stuff.
West Flemish:
> De meiste eiland'n in de Stiln Oceoan vormn t'hope mè 't continent Australië e weirelddeil die Oceanië wordt genoemd. -- https://vls.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent
Oceania is not Australia. After the Wikipedia article: "Oceania is a geographical region which includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia".
In English, Australia is just Australia. The Australian continent includes the Australian mainland, New Guinea and several islands within Australian or Indonesian jurisdiction.
Oceania is this designation of convenience that excludes islands that are non-Continental and would otherwise be lumped in with Asia, and in addition to Australia there are three groupings of island territories which are ethnically classified as Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.
Melanesia includes New Guinea (remember, part of the Australian continent, separated from the country by a strait), and running east goes to Nauru, southeast to Fiji, and then west to New Caledonia which is essentially one of the highest altitude masses of the mostly submerged continent of Zealandia (the other land masses being New Zealand and a few islands belonging to the country of Australia). Melanesia also includes the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.
Micronesia is a region that from Palau runs east through the Federated States or Micronesia to Kiribati, northwest to the Mariana Islands (including Guam) and back down to Palau and is mostly in the Northern Pacific.
Polynesia forms a near-triangle often referred to as the Polynesian Triangle with New Zealand in the Southern corner, Hawai’i in the Northern corner and Easter Island in the Eastern corner. There are too many island groups here for me to want to list them all, but this is essentially where Polynesian peoples settled.
Which brings us back to Oceania. There’s all these islands people live that if you squint your eyes a little look like they’re close enough to Australia. Why not just group them all together and call them a continent? And from what I’ve gathered that’s exactly what a lot of countries have done for a while or started to do. Continents are basically arbitrary BS anyway, good BS that serves a useful purpose colloquially but still BS; and it looks like to me like it’s just a way of keeping the list of “major regions” shorter than it otherwise would be because between Australia also being a country and all of these archipelagos spread out across the Pacific being both low population and underdeveloped, nobody wants to append them to a list of supposed “continents” as separate entities, so Oceania it is.
And if you did that, what about India? Arabia? Madagascar? The western portion of North America basically divided by the Rockies? This would start to get political after a while.
So eh, Australia is a continent in English, but Oceania is a region that includes Australia. Whether the continent of “Australia” includes the obvious portions like New Guinea, well, not when I was in school, but I don’t think that matters.
Yes, if you grew up being told that the continent is Oceania, and all the people around you were also told the continent is Oceania, then Australia is indeed the biggest island. Language is fun like that.
The term "continent" is illdefined, but English wikipedia defines the Continet of Australia to comprise the country of Australia and the country of Papua New Guinea, as well as part of the country of Indonesia (Western New Guinea)
This is a separate Australia to Australia the Mainland (which doesn't New Guinea), and separate from Australia the country (which includes Tasmania)
Therefore I'm not convinced that "Australia is a continent, so it cannot be an island by definition" rules out the Australia Mainland.
If we look at the wikipedia definition of Island
"subcontinental land completely surrounded by water"
And accept that "Australia the continent" comprises "Australia Mainland", New Guinea (both PNG and part of Indonesia), and nearby islands like Tasmania and Lord Howe (but not New Zealand), then Australia Mainland is surely subcontinental and completely surrounded by water.
Once you leave the English speaking world though, Oceania as a continent comes into play, which goes back to that "definition of continent"
There is a widely accepted difference between islands and continents in terms of geology. Continents are often considered to be the largest landmass of a particular continental plate; this holds true for Australia, which sits on its own continental lithosphere and tectonic plate (the Australian Plate).
By contrast, islands are usually seen as being extensions of the oceanic crust (e.g. volcanic islands), or as belonging to a continental plate containing a larger landmass (continental islands); the latter is the case of Greenland, which sits on the North American Plate.
Asia (Or Eurasia, or Africa/Eurasia) comprise multiple tectonic plates, as does America (or North/South America). Is the area south of the Himalayas a separate continent from the area north because they're on different plates? What continent is Iceland in? Or Japan, much of which is on the North American plate.
There's no clear definition and there's far to much political and cultural meaning in the definition of a continent so any definition involving the term is going to be ambiguous.
The continental plate based definition seems to include a number of splits they are not widely considered continents. I mean I’ll happily combine Europe and Asia into Eurasia, and India is clearly a continent, but an Arabian continent doesn’t seem to be brought up much at all, and I’ve never heard of somebody listing “a bit of Central America” when talking about the continents.
Wouldn't this apply to other continents too? Given for example Vancouver Island is part of North America, then North America (the island, not the continent) would qualify as it too is sub-continental. Europe and Asia would be the only continents excluded by virtue of being connected by land.
In many parts of the world, it is taught that Oceania is the continent.
IMHO, saying that Australia is a continent comes with the problematic notion that its close-by neighbour New Zealand is not part of any continent, which would be weird given that even Bouvet island is assigned to a continent.
I’ve never heard of the idea that Australia might be an island instead of a continent. Grew up in the 90’s in the US, FWIW. I wonder if “Australia as a continent” is an older idea?
Of course people will argue endlessly about what exactly a continent is (can’t just use geology because then Europeans don’t get to be special), but the truth of the matter is, capturing Australia gets you +2 troops in Risk so it must be a continent.
> Unfortunately, we can’t make use of this intuition in a formal way because of the coastline paradox.
I wonder if you could create some "relaxed" definitions of "convex" that would be able to capture shape properties only at certain scales. Something like "every polygon from points which are between x and y meters from the coastline and at least z meters from each other is convex".
Draw a convex polygon which satisfies the conditions
1. Every point on the edge of the polygon is in water
2. Every point on the land in question is inside the polygon
And then sample some very large n points uniformly/randomly from inside the polygon, reporting whether you hit land or water. The closer to 100% land your sampling gets, the more “convex-like” the land in question is.
Basically, draw a convex bounding polygon around the land and ask how much of that bounding polygon does the land fill up.
Continents are a flawed and made-up concept. They make no sense. They add absolutely no value to any discourse. I simply refrain from using the concept.
> it’s actually necessary to stipulate that continents cannot be islands, as otherwise the largest island would be the Americas, or perhaps mainland Asia + Africa + Europe.
I don't understand. Why does considering a single continent to be an island also mean that you need to include groupings of multiple continents in that definition? Europe + Asia + Africa is 3 continents, not one.
Is it transitive? Does "continent cannot be island" imply "island cannot be continent"? I don't even know the other word to describe "island cannot be a single continent, but it CAN be multiple continents".
I guess that gets into the question: "Can a river count as the border of an island?". What happens if the river dries up sometimes?
It seems people have already decided there are 7 continents, and will adjust the definition until it gives the result.
Africa is enough separate that you can make an argument that it isn't part of Asia+Europe. I can see no good reason to call Europe and Asia a separate continent. (I'm not sure if it is bigger than north+south America - it feels like it is, but maps can be deceiving and can't be bothered to look it up). Of course if Africa is not part of Asia+Europe then it is hard to argue America is one continent.
In the end we don't have a good definition of continent though, so you can find plenty of weird things you can argue should be the definition and thus come up with a lot of contradictory answers.
Maybe Afroeurasia is just "land" and everything else is ocean, with islands.
I find it funny that humans love facts like "the skin is the largest organ" but hate facts like "Afroeurasia is the largest island". I wonder why that is.
I don't think people hate either, we just don't treat them as actually-true when using language. Nobody ordinarily means to include "skin" when they say "organ" (possibly doctors or academics in certain contexts, but it's not normal usage), and nobody means "Afroeurasia" when they say "island".
It's a kind of reductio based on what people will tell you when you ask them to define "island", to show that definitions they come up with tend to have outcomes they don't like—happily, we may just ignore all that and keep using the words in a useful and mutually-intelligible way, so that language remains tenable. In fact, the reductio isn't proving people wrong when they say "afroeurasia isn't an island". Nobody treats it that way, so it's not. If they did, we'd need a different word for "island".
I used to think continents and seabed were the same. If you were to add more sea there would be more seabed, less continents. Remove the water and all that's left is a single continent.
But that's not even close. For starters, the continents are ancient. The seabed, the crust between the continents, is in a constant process of renewal. The age of the seabed is measured in millions of years, not billions.
> as otherwise the largest island would be the Americas, or perhaps mainland Asia + Africa + Europe.
Isn't that the point though? North America is not an island. Asia is not an island. If NA and SA were one, they would be an island, but they are not.
If the point is Australia is a continent and hence not an island fine. But it's not because Americas will then become island because Americas is not a continent.
Contrary to the point made somewhere here about how "Oceania is an outmoded espression", it is actually the newer concept: The word "Australia" has meant something about that part of the world for longer than has "Oceania". (At a guess, the Olympic rings symbol was designed and acquired the description of what it stands for before "Oceania" came into widespread use.)
The whole probelm here is that the English word "continent" actually means two different but closely related things, namely the older cultural-geographical concept "part of the world" (cf Ger. "Erdteil", lit. "part of the Earth") on the one hand, and the more narrowly geological idea of continental shelves &c. "Hello, so which part of the world are you from?" is a much older question than the idea of tectonic plates, so Europe and Asia being different things has been thoroughly cemented into the public conciousness although geologically, they're one and the same. Contrariwise, the Americas both got the same name even though they're (apparently, AFAIK) actually two different things. So, it would help immensely to keep these two different categorisations separate. "Erdteil" is often called "region" in English, but that word is also already overloaded with quite enough meanings, so this usage probably doesn't exactly bring any increased clarity on the whole.
Unfortunately, contemporary colloquial English uses the word "continent" for both concepts, so confusion like yours is only all too common. To come back to your specific points:
* The ring represents Oceania and not Australia
In modern politically correct parlance it represents a part of the world ("Erdteil"), not a single geological entity. Saying it represents only the actual continent of Australia would leave New Zealanders and Micronesians without any representation at all, so that would be rather un-PC. My guess is that back when the rings symbol was adopted, PC details like this just weren't on the agenda, so they simply said "Australia".
* and this makes Australia an island in Oceania.
No it doesn't. It makes Australia a geological-continent in the region-of-the-world Oceania; or, if you will: It makes Australia a continent-1 in continent-2 Oceania. (See how using the same word for different things kinda sucks?)
It's America. It's a continent. It was named after Amerigo Vespucci.
The fact that English speakers, led by the citizens of the United States of America, in practice claim the name America for themselves and want to push the point of North and South (never quite agreeing what north is depending on the political point being made), doesn't mean that there's objective validity to it. Just a egocentric convenience and the superpower influence.
> Just a egocentric convenience and the superpower influence.
This is completely wrong, unless your argument is something like there being only two continents. Which is fine but pretty far from how continents are normally defined and you should probably use a different word.
By far the most egregious continent border is Europe vs. Asia, and Africa is connected to those two just as much as the Americas are connected.
> never quite agreeing what north is depending on the political point being made
You get the same political fussiness around every continent border. But the geographic boundary is pretty well decided to be Panama.
To the flagged reply: There are multiple ways to count the continents, but the particular reason you mocked for listing two americas was just wrong. I'm not trying to force you to do it my way, but I want you to use basic logic.
And I don't know what your point is about central america. Nobody calls central america a continent.
Just to add to that, the poster's point is literally contradicted right in the cited article (Spanish wikipedia article on continent):
> En realidad no existe una única forma de fijar el número de continentes y depende de cada área cultural determinar si dos grandes masas de tierra unidas forman uno o dos continentes, y en concreto, decidir los límites entre Europa y Asia (Eurasia) por una parte y América del Norte y América del Sur (América) por otra.
Yes. That's done to appease the anglos because Historically, it doesn't work like that and, fun fact, nobody but me jumped at OP who said, for all intents and purposes, "the Anglo way is the only way" but when I come with the non Anglo centric view, that's when the users jump and come quickly to correct people.
It's just a great exercise of how these sites work. And that goes for more consequential stuff than this.
I'm specific and right, but in the wrong place (HN is Reddit nowadays, preach to the choir or downvotes).
It's not preferred. It's historically accurate and I'm not the one with the burden of proof. He asserted the wrong thing, but that didn't make you question him.
Might I supply an alternative island definition that would help clear things up? Any landmass surrounded by water where you can acquire a Mai tai is an island - while any landmass surrounded by water where you are unable to acquire a Mai tai is an islet. More seriously - this is like the pluto debate all over again and it seems mostly fueled by negative perceptions of being and not being a thing. Can't we just settle on all distinct land-masses being islands and some islands just being stupidly large? I don't get what we stand to gain by excluding either three or four land masses from the island definition. So long as we're excluding man made canals from the definition we only have Afro-eurasia, the Americas, Antartica and possibly Australia as non-island landmasses - making an exception in a group of thousands? millions? of water surrounded land-masses to not be islands feels exceptionally useless.
I humbly propose we open the consumption of Mai tais to everyone on earth without discrimination. If you object I welcome you to come to a conference I'm arranging on the island of Jylland.
Avoid these irritating semantics by insisting that "in a lake" be the final prepositional clause in any of these examples. We can all agree that a landmass surrounded by fresh water is an island, right? (And that lakes are uncontroversially fresh water by definition?)
> Australia is a continent, so it cannot be an island by definition
So the reason greenland being an island is due to definition then? Which makes the concept of an island moot, as it's driven via definition, rather than criteria.
The unambigious definition would be a contiguous landmass surrounded by water at sealevel, which would be in descending order of area
Afro-Eurasia *
Americas *
Antarctica
Australia landmass
Greenland
* This of course depending on how rivers and man-made canals of Suez, Panama, and other canals like Kiel, or ones linking rivers, are treated, there could be arguments that Suez should be included (no locks), but Panama shouldn't be, or all should be, or none should be, or Suez and Panama should be, etc
"The largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island is Vulcan Point. It is a small rocky island located within Main Crater Lake, which is on Volcano Island. Volcano Island is situated within Lake Taal, which is on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. Although Vulcan Point is not very large, it holds the distinction of being part of this unique geographical formation."
The title it automatically set for the chat is "Islandception: Vulcan Point"
EDIT: GPT 3.5
"The largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island is known as a recursive or nested island. There are a few examples of such islands in the world, but the most famous one is located in Canada.
The island is called Victoria Island and it is located in the Nunavut territory of Canada. The island itself is the eighth largest island in the world and has an area of 217,291 square miles.
On Victoria Island, there is a lake called Island Lake, which is approximately 10 miles long and 4 miles wide. Within Island Lake, there is another island known as Mystery Island. Mystery Island is about 0.6 miles long and 0.3 miles wide.
On Mystery Island, there is a small lake known as "Unnamed Island Lake". This lake contains another island which is unnamed and not well documented, but is believed to be the largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island."
It's lake islands all the way down...