What's the Longest Straight Line You Can Sail Without Touching Land?

this video is made possible by brilliant learn complex topics simply for 20% off by being one of the first two hundred to sign up at brilliant org slash real-life floor have you ever just sat on a beach and looked out across the ocean and just thought to yourself man if I went in a straight line from where I am now how far would I go until I hit more land or from where you are right now as you're watching this video how far could you travel in a straight line on land before you run out of land maybe I'm just weird but I've been thinking lately about what's the furthest straight line you can move across the Earth's surface in both of these categories it's a little confusing to really wrap your head around this one because we're often used to imagining the earth in a 2-dimensional space like a map so most of the time thinking about this you'll come up with pretty boring answers like maybe Australia to South America but when we transform our thinking into a globe but the answers get a lot more interesting and a lot more crazy but before all the hate comments come pouring in though it's true that's no distance between two points across the Earth's surface is truly flats this may seem true enough on a map but on a globe with a more correct shape a line from point A to point B more resembles an arc in empty space if you delete the globe in geometry these arcs form part what's called a great circle basically an imaginary circle drawn around an entire sphere the longest straight line across an ocean without touching any land therefore has to lie across an arc on one of these great circles around the Earth the first I need to share with you some equally interesting lines between points that you probably would never imagine by simply looking at map and first among those is the straight line across water connecting italy with venezuela yes that's right on a map this looks dumb but here's how it actually works out in reality you only have about a six mile stretch of shoreline around the town of palmy in italy to work with here but if you stay within the borders of the line you'll eventually make it all the way to Venezuela you're gonna just squeeze through the northern part of the Strait of Gibraltar and then just barely miss the island of Madeira before finally landing over on the others but it is possible which I guess helps explain why Venezuela is named after Venice and has so many Italians you can also start in Norway and sail in a straight line up and eventually arrive in Antarctica over on the other side of the world without ever touching any other land this seems weird but again here's how it actually plays out you have to start in a very narrow stretch of coast again on the western side of Norway and head so far north that you eventually begin heading south you cross between Svalbard and Greenland just barely squeezed through the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia you'll just barely squeeze through again when you're passing through the Aleutian Islands and a long way later across the Pacific you'll barely skirt past Samoa but from there on it's a straight shot all the way over to Antarctica but unfortunately it's not the part of Antarctica which is already claimed by Norway which is a big shame in my opinion it lands instead in the only part of Antarctica which no country in the world currently claims yet so I feel like this is a pretty good qualification for Norway to just call dibs now you could probably spend forever looking at a globe and drawing lines between points just hoping that you'll eventually discover the longest one but forever isn't exactly an understatement on a global map with a resolution of 1 point 85 kilometers you'll encounter over 230 billion possible great circles that loop around it and each of these great circles consists of 20 1,600 individual points which add together to form over 5 trillion possible points for you to consider finding the longest possible straight line and all of that is like finding a needle in a haystack or you could create a computer program to just do everything for you like these two guys did the algorithm that they developed to prove the longest straight line across water was nothing short of genius they exploited a technique that's known as branch and bound towards cartography and it essentially works by considering every potential solution to a problem as branches of a tree rather than evaluating each solution individually the algorithm simply an entire branch with the optimal solution found inside every branch has a better or a worse solution to the problem so if the algorithm detects a worse solution it discards the entire branch but if it contains a better solution it replaces it in place of the old one this process continued until BAM the computer came back with the proven longest straight line between two points of land on the Earth's surface and it's so weird one if you start in southern Pakistan and head south you can eventually hit Russia without ever touching another piece of land which looks super weird and super click bTW on a map but here's how it actually checks out you begin in sonmi on e in Balochistan Pakistan and head across this line go past nearby Somalia so try not to get captain Phillip belonged away once past that you'll cross between Africa and Madagascar and pass through the doldrums for the first time if you brought a sailboat with you you could get screwed pretty hard here because the wind can sometimes stop for weeks on end but hopefully you brought a motor that didn't get stolen by the pirates and you've gotten yourself through so now you cross the Atlantic before sliding in through the Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica which is quite possibly the most dangerous body of water in the world wind speeds can get up to 80 miles per hour here which helps to generate huge waves extremely strong currents and with the added complexity of poor visibility year-round you may wish that you had just gotten kidnapped by the pirates back near Somalia the survival odds may be higher depending on how crappy your boat is anyway if you get through that you only have to sail across literally the entire Pacific Ocean and through the most empty part of the planet you'll be pretty nearby the point Nemo here which is literally the furthest point away in the ocean from any land if you run into trouble out here the closest other humans to you will often be the astronauts occasionally orbiting above you aboard the International Space Station you'll be several days two weeks away from any actual help that could come to you from an inhabited part of the world and that's even if you had the ability to signal for help so like try not to do anything dumb or you'll be wishing for the pirates once again you also have to pass back through the doldrums over on this side of the world here so sailboats run an extra hazard of getting trapped again but when you finally get to the other side of the line you'll hit land in a cut against key district of the Kamchatka Krai in Russia after sailing across lovely 80% of the entire Earth's circumference and more importantly achieving something that nobody before in history has ever done plenty of people have circumnavigated the globe before but that's boring compared to this so get out there and do your research and planning and do something great like this of course planning and research for anything takes both practice and efforts if you're going to go on an adventure sailing in a straight line across the ocean or if you want to study a globe to find your own beer lines to impress people at the bar with you need to understand how the planet works as in what is the actual shape of Earth how does the weather work or how does the earth rotate but all of these things are also concepts that you can learn about in brilliant physics of the everyday course brilliant is the best place to learn complex things such as physics geometry or really any field of math and science not only do they have all of their fabulously designed courses they also have the goal of helping you get a little smarter every day a series of daily challenges so in just five minutes while you're waiting for the bus your coffee your classes start or whatever you can challenge yourself with one of these and then if it gets your interest each is linked to one of their full length courses as well you can try brilliant and support this channel by signing up for free at brilliant org slash real life floor however the first 200 people that go to that link will also get 20% off the annual premium subscription thank you for watching and I'll see you again next week

Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 1,932,199

Rating: 4.9117022 out of 5

Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know, longest straight line, longest line, longest straight line you can sail, ocean travel, pakistan to russia, longest straight line on water, straight line earth

Id: qQoXqkzr9fg

Length: 8min 18sec (498 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 31 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/AAA786786]

I thought there was one discovered that was longer than this line and went from Canada to Russia?

[u/anz3e]

Sonmiani Balochistan*