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Longest Straight Line Paths on Water or Land on the Earth (2018)

arxiv.org

21–30 of 66 posts

Re: Longest Straight Line Paths on Water or Land on the Earth (2018)

#21

There's a longer land path that starts in or near Senegal and ends in China. But they miss it because it goes near the Dead Sea, and they treat anything below sea level as water.

If you are talking about the trail from Cape Town to Vladivostok, that one is not a straight line.

Re: Longest Straight Line Paths on Water or Land on the Earth (2018)

#22

There's a longer land path that starts in or near Senegal and ends in China. But they miss it because it goes near the Dead Sea, and they treat anything below sea level as water.

Indeed, this route would be about 13,250 km, or about 2,000 km longer than the one TLA suggests.

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=10%B0+24%27+41.4%22+N,+14%B0+31...

Or, using nearby airports: https://www.greatcirclemap.com/?routes=gucy-vmmc

Re: Longest Straight Line Paths on Water or Land on the Earth (2018)

#24

But what would flat-earthers consider the longest possible paths to be? Not the ones shown in the article, presumably?

Over water, probably something like the entire 60th parallel south.

Over land, I think you want to start near the westernmost point of the African continent and thread the needle of the Isthmus of Suez, and stay south of the Caspian Sea. At least in the projection gcmap.com uses (plate carree - essentially the x-coordinate and y-coordinate are just raw longitude and latitude), this keeps you south of Lake Baikal and allows you to get very far east in far eastern Russia. Something like 17.5 N, 16 W to 69 N, 178.5 E seems to work:

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=17.5n16w-21.79n0.21e-26.08n16.4...

Of course this depends on the projection you use!

This is different from the Portugal-to-China path that is the longest over land in reality, which a flat-earther would have crossing the Mediterranean.

Re: Longest Straight Line Paths on Water or Land on the Earth (2018)

#25
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I opened Apple Maps in globe mode and I still have trouble visualizing the water path.

Does it help to point out that the water path looks suspiciously like the day/night line on a map? Like this: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5477/

yes!! why is that ? :)

Re: Longest Straight Line Paths on Water or Land on the Earth (2018)

#26
post #21

There's a longer land path that starts in or near Senegal and ends in China. But they miss it because it goes near the Dead Sea, and they treat anything below sea level as water.

If you are talking about the trail from Cape Town to Vladivostok, that one is not a straight line.

They aren't, as clicking through on a sibling's link demonstrates. Moreover, Senegal is nowhere near Cape Town.

Re: Longest Straight Line Paths on Water or Land on the Earth (2018)

#28
post #2

The paper is basically like this (spoiler alert): “Some random user on Reddit posted a picture claiming that this is the longest straight line path on water possible on the Earth. We implemented a smart algorithm to solve this problem, found the elevation data, ran our algorithm... yes, that random user was right. Also, here's the longest path on land.” Thanks, I really enjoyed reading it, even though I hoped that th…

I opened Apple Maps in globe mode and I still have trouble visualizing the water path.

It's going South and then trying to close the loop from behind. It gets interrupted by land before the loop closes.

Hope it makes sense.

Re: Longest Straight Line Paths on Water or Land on the Earth (2018)

#29
post #2

The paper is basically like this (spoiler alert): “Some random user on Reddit posted a picture claiming that this is the longest straight line path on water possible on the Earth. We implemented a smart algorithm to solve this problem, found the elevation data, ran our algorithm... yes, that random user was right. Also, here's the longest path on land.” Thanks, I really enjoyed reading it, even though I hoped that th…

I opened Apple Maps in globe mode and I still have trouble visualizing the water path.

Open the linked paper and scroll down, they have images of the path on a globe as well as the flat map view.

Re: Longest Straight Line Paths on Water or Land on the Earth (2018)

#30
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it help to point out that the water path looks suspiciously like the day/night line on a map? Like this: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5477/

yes!! why is that ? :)

The day/light line is a great circle. The "straight line paths" are great-circle segments.
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