Taken from https://experiments.withgoogle.com/floom

By: Nick Gambino

You know how when you were little people would say if you dug deep enough through the ground beneath your feet you’d wind up in China? Well, that’s obviously not true. That’s not how a globe works. But we were young and believed just about anything.

Now Google has a new tool, Floom, that’ll let you see what exactly is directly on the other side of Earth from the spot where you stand. The new Google AR toy creates a portal on the floor that lets you peer into the other side of the globe.

“Explore the world with Floom, a new experiment that lets you create AR tunnels to get to the other side of the planet,” a Google tweet says.

You’re basically creating direct line tunnels where you point your phone. You can angle your phone in different directions to see where the tunnel takes you. You simply point it at the floor, when you’ve got the angle you want, you tap to drill the tunnel. The portal opens up and reveals what’s on the other side of that floor if you drilled straight through to the other end.

This might be Australia or the Middle East, depending on where you’re located or where you’re pointing your phone. What’s cool is even the slightest angle shift will put you on another continent because…well, physics.

After you see through the portal you can click and discover more in that area using Google Earth. This AR portal tool looks like a lot of fun, but it also works great as an educational tool for classrooms or for anyone with an interest in geography.

You’ll need an Android phone using the most recent version of Chrome to use Floom. I, of course, don’t have an Android phone, so I wasn’t able to try it out myself, but demo videos make it look pretty fly.

Now, if they’d just release an app for the iPhone, I could finally see what’s beneath my feet. Or more accurately, what’s 4,000 miles beneath my feet.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR