Not a native speaker, but this got me thinking: how would you interpret "halfway" in this sentence:
>It’s not halfway across the globe
Equator is 40k km long, so it makes sense getting "halfway" there would be 20k km. But the "half" is of something, and it doesn't sound right that "at the end of the globe" would be the same place you started with. Especially since being "on the other end of the world" means roughly, well, opposite side of the globe.
So I think OP is justified in defining "across the globe" as the "opposite side of the world", and then "halfway across the globe" is "quarter the length of equator away". But maybe I'm overthinking it.
As a native speaker: I think “across” (while understandable from context) is the wrong preposition because to me that would imply a diametric traversal, not circumspect, eg, halfway across would land you in the core of the earth. Half way around is what I would say to describe superficial travel of half the earth’s circumference, landing at the opposite side of the world.
This is a very fair point! Another way they could be given credit is that the radius of the earth (another way to view "halfway across the globe") is 6371km so again the quoted distance would be more than this half.
Thanks for explaining! Yeah.. I was thinking of the maximum direct surface distance when saying "across the globe"... That would be 20k km... and the sea route turns to be about 10K km long from Kolkata to Osaka...
>It’s not halfway across the globe
Equator is 40k km long, so it makes sense getting "halfway" there would be 20k km. But the "half" is of something, and it doesn't sound right that "at the end of the globe" would be the same place you started with. Especially since being "on the other end of the world" means roughly, well, opposite side of the globe.
So I think OP is justified in defining "across the globe" as the "opposite side of the world", and then "halfway across the globe" is "quarter the length of equator away". But maybe I'm overthinking it.