The Ultimate Nerd Geography Trivia Question

[DonRocks]

You're on the Carribbean island of Barbados. All of a sudden, the entire island starts floating due North. What, specifically, will you hit first (I'm looking for the smallest named unit of land possible, and how you got there).

If anyone - *anyone* - gets this question right without first doing some research, you're either Sinbad the Sailor, or you've got too much time on your hands.

I'm going to open this up to guests just because it's so terribly difficult. This is not a trick question (there's no tiny, unmapped islet out in the middle of the sea that's claimed by some obscure country); it's just a very difficult question.

If anyone gets this correct without first doing some research, I'll keel over and die.

[Steve R.]

Definitely have too much time on my hands but I still don't know for sure where in Canada I'd land.  I know that Barbados is east of everything else but does it hit Nova Scotia or is it even further east?

[DonRocks]

4 hours ago, Steve R. said:

Definitely have too much time on my hands but I still don't know for sure where in Canada I'd land.  I know that Barbados is east of everything else but does it hit Nova Scotia or is it even further east?

Do you want the answer now, or do you want to roll up your sleeves?

I think it's pretty fascinating, and very unlikely.

[Steve R.]

I WANT THE ANSWER NOW! (please).

Unless anyone else cares to play along.

[DonRocks]

Okay, no tricks here. Strict rules of cartography with latitude based on the equator, and longitude based on the Prime Meridian. "Moving North" means moving towards the North Pole (the actual geodetic North Pole of 90') by increasing the latitude while keeping the exact same longitude. For the purposes of this problem, we'll assume that Barbados is a two-dimensional structure with length and width, but no depth, i.e., nothing that could drag along a sandbar.

[DonRocks]

(I'm actually not 100% sure how this is going to turn out ...)

I went to Google Earth, and plotted two points on Barbados - farthest West and farthest East (visual approximations) - then connected them with a line just to make things easier to see.

The two points are (approximately) 59'39"15"' W and 59'25''12''' W, about 14 minutes (16 miles) difference in longitude.

For the purposes of our problem, this means we'll have a 16-mile-wide land mass floating north (at no point is it actually 16-miles wide, but the maximum width is 16 miles).

So let's say this thing starts floating north - what will it run into? Essentially, it will collide with anything located between 59'40'' W and 59'25'' W.

.

[DonRocks]

For simplicity's sake, I'm returning from Google Earth to Google Maps for this demonstration. Unless I'm missing some unknown land mass in the Atlantic Ocean, our Floating-Barbados has nothing to worry about until it gets to the Eastern Canadian Provinces. I looked pretty carefully, and I didn't see anything.

But where will it hit?

[DonRocks]

Our first potential obstacle isn't Nova Scotia proper, but a tiny little crescent-shaped islet called Sable Island (<--- read that), about 190 miles southeast of Halifax.

[DonRocks]

40 minutes ago, DonRocks said:

So let's say this thing starts floating north - what will it run into? Essentially, it will collide with anything located between 59'40'' W and 59'25'' W.

24 minutes ago, DonRocks said:

Our first potential obstacle isn't Nova Scotia proper, but a tiny little crescent-shaped islet called Sable Island, about 190 miles southeast of Halifax.

But if you go back to Google Earth, and examine Sable Island, you can see that its easternmost point is still ever-so-slightly west of 59'40".

So, the western side of Barbados is going to squeak by the eastern tip of Sable Island by less than 2 minutes of longitude, or about 2 miles!

What happens next is truly amazing, in a very small sort of way.

[DonRocks]

Once past Sable Island, the next obstacle is Nova Scotia proper. In particular, the eastern tip of Cape Breton Island - a tiny little islet named Scatarie Island Wilderness Area. You can see Nova Scotia in relation to Sable Island here (Sable Island is down by 44" North).

Scaterie Island is just to the east of Glace Bay. Here's a blown-up map of it on Google Earth:

2 hours ago, DonRocks said:

So let's say this thing starts floating north - what will it run into? Essentially, it will collide with anything located between 59'40'' W and 59'25'' W.

As the map shows, the entirety of Scatarie Island lies to the west of 59'40", so once again, the western tip of Barbados slides by, with only about 2 miles to spare, and continues its relentless march to the North.

On 8/5/2020 at 6:03 PM, Steve R. said:

Definitely have too much time on my hands but I still don't know for sure where in Canada I'd land.  I know that Barbados is east of everything else but does it hit Nova Scotia or is it even further east?

So yes, Steve, as you suspected, Barbados is even further east than Nova Scotia.

[DonRocks]

The only thing that's left for Barbados to hit is Newfoundland, which you can see on this Google Earth map just to the northeast of Nova Scotia:

I zoomed in on the western tip of Newfoundland, which is a point just to the northwest of a little community named Codroy:

3 hours ago, DonRocks said:

So let's say this thing starts floating north - what will it run into? Essentially, it will collide with anything located between 59'40'' W and 59'25'' W.

But as impossible as it may seem, this westernmost point of Newfoundland is j-u-s-t barely east of 59'25'' - the easternmost tip of Barbados has a west longitude of 59'25"12"', meaning it will be about 12-15 *seconds* west of Newfoundland. 12-15 seconds translates to about 500 yards, and so as Barbados continues floating to the North, two people standing on the eastern tip of Barbados, and the western tip of Newfoundland, could wave to each other, and say hello, probably without even raising their voices.

[DonRocks]

Our odyssey ends here, but not before Barbados manages to squeeze between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, floating at an impossibly acute angle all the way up the Cabot Strait, and across the entire Gulf of Saint Lawrence, before finally bumping into one of the barrier islands off the southern coast of *Quebec* - at a tiny municipality called Côte-Nord-du-Golfe-du-Saint-Laurent.

[Steve R.]

Okay then.  After all this, I’m gonna suggest that Barbados stays put & doesn’t start floating north.  At least not without stopping somewhere for cold weather gear.