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Poof! You're on Earth
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Can you find latitude and longitude of your location on Earth without access to surface landmarks or local clocks?

The sci-fi (or sci-fantasy) situation for this question is:

A group of people have a headquarters on an alternate history Earth, accessible via appropriate gateway device. This alternate history Earth has no humans or civilization other than this HQ building, which is sitting on an anonymous patch of desert that could be anywhere from Australia to the US West. The people running the HQ aren't telling their guests where it's located on alternate Earth. 

The gateway device reaches across time in other ways; the alternate Earth might be thousands of years in a (parallel) future or parallel past. Continents are the same shape, but there could be differences in biomes. The stars may be a bit off.

Guests lack transport to travel far enough to find useful landmarks, but are welcome to bring all sorts of binoculars, portable telescopes, sextants, compasses, reference books/computers, etc.

So, for reasonably educated and equipped people, can they figure out roughly their latitude and longitude? If so, how?

It looks like you could find the latitude with the midday sun. Longitude is harder with no calibrated reference points, correct?
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer
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"Everbody's always in favor of saving Hitler's brain, but when you put it in the body of a great white shark, oh, suddenly you've gone too far." -- Professor Farnsworth, Futurama
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Messages In This Thread
Poof! You're on Earth - by Cray - 03-31-2018, 12:40 PM
RE: Poof! You're on Earth - by stevebowers - 03-31-2018, 05:16 PM
RE: Poof! You're on Earth - by selden - 03-31-2018, 11:27 PM
RE: Poof! You're on Earth - by JohnnyYesterday - 04-01-2018, 07:46 AM
RE: Poof! You're on Earth - by stevebowers - 04-01-2018, 03:52 PM
RE: Poof! You're on Earth - by Cray - 04-02-2018, 09:32 PM
RE: Poof! You're on Earth - by iancampbell - 04-03-2018, 10:20 AM
RE: Poof! You're on Earth - by Alphadon - 05-03-2018, 05:31 PM
RE: Poof! You're on Earth - by Rynn - 05-03-2018, 07:26 PM
RE: Poof! You're on Earth - by iancampbell - 05-04-2018, 06:49 PM
RE: Poof! You're on Earth - by Rynn - 05-04-2018, 11:43 PM
RE: Poof! You're on Earth - by iancampbell - 05-09-2018, 06:13 PM

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