Comment by iso1631 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iso1631 | Hacker News Reader

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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)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_(continent)

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"

Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island#Differentiation_from_co...:

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.

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