How an Imaginary Island Stayed on Maps for Five Centuries | Hacker News Reader

How an Imaginary Island Stayed on Maps for Five Centuries

hyperallergic.com

59 pointsVigier9 comments

I always wondered if name and dreamy search in Brazil (1985 movie) for a mystical place (and woman) was motivated by Hy-Brasil.

I suppose it has been debunked, but it still seems apropos... http://stanleyrumm.com/?p=12

“Port Talbot [in Wales] is a steel town, where everything is covered with gray iron ore dust. Even the beach is completely littered with dust, its just black. The sun was setting, and it was quite beautiful. The contrast was extraordinary, I had this image of a guy sitting there on this dingy beach with a portable radio, tuning in these strange Latin escapist songs like ‘Brazil’. The music transported him somehow and made his world less gray.”

Terry Gilliam

Wales has also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmeirion , where the TV series The Prisoner was filmed.

When I see things like this I always wonder if we can find a nearby underwater mountain upon which we could build an island.

This is effectively what China is currently doing in the South China Sea [1]. These also happen naturally from time to time, see Surtsey [2] and for that matter Hawaiʻi.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_wall_of_sand

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surtsey

Yes if you don't mind building on the top of a volcano :-) Plate tectonics take to long to create new land surface.

Free energy for the next couple million years. What else could you want?

Porcupine Bank goes all the way up to 200 meters deep. Seems very doable for a very determined multi-billionaire. 200 meters of rubble is not that hard to stack.

The main problem is that there are a couple people drilling for oil around there and I suppose they'd object to being in someone's territorial waters.

OTOH, negotiating protection and sovereignty in exchange for very lax law about oil exploration could make an independent country viable.

How tragic the island of Hi Brazil would be born out of such dirty interests...

This would make a great basis for a video game.

It’s also the basis for countless books, audio books, etc.

E.g. Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy, set in the imaginary, soon-to-be-sunken Elder Isles, the largest of which is called Hybras.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com