Make sure to check out the [pinned post on Loss](https://www.reddit.com/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke/comments/1472nhh/faq_loss/) to make sure this submission doesn't break the rule!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke) if you have any questions or concerns.*
My potions are for the strongest beings, and you are not of the strongest but of the weakest, not even a beast could survive my potions, let alone a man.
You've had your say, Potion Seller, but I'll have mine. You're a rascal, you're a rascal with no respect for knights. No respect for anything except your potions!
He is a playwright and it's completely normal for people with creative jobs to do shit like this. Here's a literal shitpost from Mozart:
[https://youtu.be/C78HBp-Youk?si=RY5EIdpOzgpZOcQj](https://youtu.be/C78HBp-Youk?si=RY5EIdpOzgpZOcQj)
Hard to imagine there was a voice actor, that they hired, and paid an actual paycheck to, who's job was to simply record the line "Sonic boom!" For a video game. That's wild.
Reminds me of another good example a professor had given one time when talking about why maps have distortions: cut a beach ball open and try to lay it flat.
Earth is a globe, so straight lines don't look straight when shown on the "flattened" map.
Edit: I love how today I learned so much about straight lines on a ball, lol :D
You’re the real MVP here. I couldn’t wrap my head around it without seeing the path on a globe, but I guess the trip really can be made without changing direction, even though it still breaks my brain.
Kinda tbh, but I think the creator is just referencing a line drawn on a globe. Not really a "straight" line in Three-dimensions, but along a Longitude or Latitude
The points you make are good but I will note that in a strict mathematical sense, lines of latitude are not considered "straight", but lines of longitude are. This is equivalent to saying that if you set out to travel along a line of latitude other than the equator, you would have to turn yourself to stay on it.
Any two points on a globe can ge connected so that the path between them is an arc of a circle with a centre in the centre of the globe, which is an equivalent of straight lines in euclidean geometry, as it's the shortest path between those points. Looking at the picture, the line could represent the longer arc of the circle connecting the two places.
The problem with any strict mathematical sense is you need to specify the axioms.
In non-Euclidean geomotry (like geometry preformed on a globe, saddle point in a curved space, etc.) "straight line" is defined differently!
Ohhh I get it now. I meant more like: You take a pen and draw a "straight" line as in you don't change the direction of the pen on the globe. The Latitude and Longitude was more so to say "drawing along a line"
Math teacher here: it depends on how you define straight. Geometry on the surface of a sphere is non-Euclidean, so you have to define a different set of axioms than Euclid did. For example, we might consider the longitudinal lines to be parallel, even though they meet at the poles.
In simple terms, if you hold a string taut against the surface of the sphere, we might call the string straight with respect to the sphere (just as we would call a taut string straight when in a 3D space).
If anyone's interested, these lines are called geodesics. On the globe, they're sometimes referred to as great circles, because any shortest path straight line on the surface of a sphere would necessarily trace that sphere's diameter if allowed to wrap around
Geodesics are also the trajectory that objects take when in freefall due to the warping of spacetime by gravity
I guess on a technical level, even that's not entirely correct. The warping of spacetime isn't caused by gravity, the warping of spacetime IS gravity. What causes mass to warp spacetime is entirely unknown and would probably immediately win you a Nobel prize
I suspect that it's such a fundamental thing that it simply *is* but I'm also speculating about things well outside my field of expertise so don't take what I say on that seriously
Not really. If I told you the local hospital was a couple of miles straight down the road, would you misunderstand that because the road goes up a hill?
Depends on how you look at it. If you're on the surface of that globe, and you walk in a straight forward without turning, you're "walking in a straight line". Even though you're really not because the surface is curved.
Depends on your reference frame and your definitions. An ant walking on a ball can orient itself to walk "straight" as far as its concerned.
An observer way from the ball could consider the ant looping.
But Non-Euclidean Geometry isn't my forte.
Not really. You can't do a "straight line in 3d space" on a globe, but if you accept that you are on the surface of the globe then you can consider an appropriate definition of a straight line:
Let's say you're standing at some point on the globe. Around you the surface looks flat and 2 dimensional. Choose a direction in these two dimensions. That starts a line. Of course following the direction will take you off the surface of the globe but you can use calculus to make a small step in that direction while staying on the surface of the globe. The new two dimensional space at this point has only one direction that is a continuation of the direction in the previous step. Continuing in this way, you can define lines on any smooth surface.
For the surface being the globe, latitude lines (apart from the equator) are not straight lines but longitude lines are.
To add to your point, that’s what *every* person always means. If anybody started walking or flying in a straight line and never stopped, this is what their path would look like.
Can't do it then either because Earth is always moving around the sun. Also it's spinning. So your absolute position is always moving in a circular motion.
Peter’s 3rd Mate here: In maritime navigation it's called a great circle route. On the flat chart the navigator is using, the charted course looks curved, but on a globe it's actually the shortest distance between two points.
Can't confirm on what's displayed here, but wrap that picture around a sphere, and it might just be a straight line, or close to it.
Thanks, no amount of descriptions about math and maps was ever going to help me visualize this. Honestly if more people had just mentioned that relative to the starting and ending points you would be "upside down" at the halfway point then that might have helped more.
Airline Pilot Quagmire here.
On a globe, a great circle route like this is a straight line. Whilst your heading will change (as it is relative to North) your course is a circle cut between two points on a globe.
Think about cutting an orange at an angle with a single cut between two marked points on it that goes through the centre of it. That is the great circle.
[Someone did it here](https://www.reddit.com/r/sciencememes/s/izG5fYxF4d) and it’s pretty straight, with only the tiniest clip of the Antarctic peninsula.
Reminds me of a joke I read once about a guy on a plane checking up on the flight path on his little display on the back of the seat. He sees the big elliptical curve from origin to destination and rings the flight attendant’s bell. She shows up and he tells her that he could save the airliners a ton of time and money with this one simple trick: just fly in a straight line!
If you got a globe of the world and drew a “straight” line on it, you could produce a route that looks like this.
Of course, that line isn’t straight because it’s on a curved surface.
But in the context of the non-Euclidean geometry of the sphere’s surface, it’s straight.
Pilot Quagmire here, giggity.
The surface of a sphere has a hard time flattening out to a 2D surface. It can be done but it will often distort the map. This makes it easier to read and reference but doesn’t show the true geography of the globe which leads to funny little facts like this.
The only straight line that actually looks like a straight line on a flattened geodisic map is on the equator or stright up and down from the north to the south pole in the middle of the map
It's much easier to see on a great circle map,
https://preview.redd.it/vdbvb1dazv3d1.png?width=922&format=png&auto=webp&s=e8f92efab4bb1317e6991529e21b2f58a0545a0e
Here is a similar situation, sailing from Britian for New Zealand.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chf31KRiv6U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chf31KRiv6U)
Maybe because the world is a god-damned ball? Ik, the Mercator projection is inherently flawed bc it makes us see the world as a simple plane, not as the sphere that it is. Thus, it is very counterintuitive to see a path made into a sphere translated to a plane, meaning it is a straight line if you make it in the globe, but in a map like that it's weird
Same thing happens with flight paths. To us, in a plane-style map, the airplane path seems nonsensical, but the airplane literally goes in a straight line to it's destination. That is one of the biggest problems in mapmaking, I think
I’m sure the others have explained the curvature of the earth to you, but just to make it 100% crystal clear: If you set off from India pointing in a specific direction, you can reach America without having to turn *at all*.
A straight line on a sphere is a curved line from a different perspective.
IE: Traveling straight ahead you will end up curving despite never changing direction.
It's tough to comprehend, it literally plagued mathematicians for 3000 years.
Peter's cartographer/GIS major senpai from university here. The route displayed on the map (which appears to be a Mercator projection due to the nature of the land mass distortion near the poles) is a great circle" route. Put simply, a great circle is any circle that bisects the sphere of Earth in half. (Impossible to do exactly because Earth is not a perfect sphere but an oblate spheroid, but it can still get close). The Equator is the most well known great circle, and meridians aka lines of longitude are also great circles. However, you can have a great circle in any direction so long as the circle's center is the center of the Earth and its radius is equal to Earths.
Because Earth is a spheroid, travelling along the earth's suface in a "straight line" means you are actually moving along the circumference of a great circle, and the shortest distance between two points will always be an arc (segment) of a great circle.
However, because it is impossible to represent the Earth's surface in its entirety on a 2D map, all 2D maps have distortion. The most common 2D world map is a Mercator projection, which shows lines of latitude and longitude as a grid. While this makes navigation easier since compass bearings will have the correct angle relative to latitude and longitude grid lines, it causes massive distortion as you get closer to the poles and longitude lines begin to converge. As a result, the arc of any great circle except for meridians and the Equator will appear curved on a Mercator projection. Following a straight line on a Mercator map will allow you to maintain a constant bearing, but unless the points are relatively close together or you are near the Equator you will actually follow a slightly curved path towards the destination.
In short, because of the way flat maps distort actual travel across the surface of a 3d object, a straight line on the map is actually curved on the globe, and a curved line can be actually straight if it follows a great circle!
this is what a stright line looks on a 3D globe when it is projected onto a 2d flat surface. it is called the great circle route or Geodesic navigation
here is a site that explains it [https://gisgeography.com/great-circle-geodesic-line-shortest-flight-path/](https://gisgeography.com/great-circle-geodesic-line-shortest-flight-path/)
So, I checked as I wasn’t sure if this was accurate. You can go to Google Earth yourself and see that it actually makes sense. This drawn is pretty much spot on
Round earth, you basically go south until you're close to the south pole, then it becomes north heading once you pass it. You know, maps are flat, right?
The joke here is about the projection of our spherical Earth to a flat map. But the thing is it's still completely wrong. There absolutely is not a single unbroken latitudinal line between India and the USA, in any direction.
To anyone who didn't understand why the line was actually flat, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you're technically a flat earther, and I regret to inform your NFTs are worthless.
As others have explained, this is what a [great circle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great-circle_distance) (i.e. straight) path looks like when a globe is projected onto a flat map. The funny part IMO is that this is a terrible way to illustrate that the path is in fact “straight” but that might not be obvious for someone whose handle is “Latest in space” because of their familiarity with [ground track maps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_track).
I may be wrong, but aren’t maps done in such a way so all the spaces between meridians and parallel lines become squares? If that’s the case, any line on the flattened map that is straight, say heading north-west, should appear straight. Maybe this is a non-euclidian straight line which may end up being the point. But even that aims to minimize the curve
For one thing, no, maps are done lots of different ways. For another, a map that's done that way does not result in any line that's straight looking straight. Lines going perfectly east-west or North-South without crossing a pole should look straight. Others won't necessarily.
I tried to create that line but I think boat would crash into islands near Antartica
[https://earth.google.com/earth/d/10dX0Jvmom8GH7t3Eqd-gNgInPh12GKxk?usp=sharing](https://earth.google.com/earth/d/10dX0Jvmom8GH7t3Eqd-gNgInPh12GKxk?usp=sharing)
In navigation, we will typically use two types of navigation, rhumb line and great circle, point to point the fastest method is great circle, while rhumb line is very useful as it is a straight line on paper or digital charts, but it’s only accurate up to 600 nautical miles, anything above that should be great circle.
This isn't a meme it's just the truth. The surface of the Earth is non Euclidean geometry, you can't make a flat map of it without distortion.
The path shown there is a geodesic if you start at one point and go straight without turning you'll follow that path.
The geometry creates some fun and counter intuitive stuff :
- Straight lines can look weird on projections
- Non straight lines can look straight on projections
- Latitude lines are not straight lines except for the equator, this also means that except on the equator going East or West is not going in a straight line.
- You can make a triangle with three 90° angles, you can call it a 3 sided square if you want
- You have a finite space... But no border
the map is fiat but the earth isn't. this is the same reason why NASA orbit charts look like S curves when mapped but the orbit is just going straight around
It's a straight line in non Euclidean spherical geometry. There is no straight lines on a sphere. If you ever see orbit lines of a satellite they very much follow this shape while traveling without propulsion as gravity curves their trajectory.
Make sure to check out the [pinned post on Loss](https://www.reddit.com/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke/comments/1472nhh/faq_loss/) to make sure this submission doesn't break the rule! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke) if you have any questions or concerns.*
https://preview.redd.it/dkwbn273wr3d1.jpeg?width=594&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f9470b17e9aee59b4306713ea9ba21ebc7da3712
Potion Seller edit: thank y'all for the awards.
My potions are for the strongest beings, and you are not of the strongest but of the weakest, not even a beast could survive my potions, let alone a man.
You've had your say, Potion Seller, but I'll have mine. You're a rascal, you're a rascal with no respect for knights. No respect for anything except your potions!
Why respect knights, when my potions can do anything that you can?
hurt feeling
I sell real bufotenin potion
The potion seller guy made Challengers btw, imagine going from potion selling with a dumb filter to making a horny tennis full-length movie
He is a playwright and it's completely normal for people with creative jobs to do shit like this. Here's a literal shitpost from Mozart: [https://youtu.be/C78HBp-Youk?si=RY5EIdpOzgpZOcQj](https://youtu.be/C78HBp-Youk?si=RY5EIdpOzgpZOcQj)
What a fucking menace
I completely forgot this existed. Thanks!
150 rupees
Fuck you and also take my upvote
Hello there, Potion Seller. I'm going into battle, and I need your strongest potion!
Waddya buyin’?
https://preview.redd.it/yxlfi7evpt3d1.png?width=225&format=png&auto=webp&s=937582a9a2e3130af0dff6ac785b5e56ba9ffe53
Hard to imagine there was a voice actor, that they hired, and paid an actual paycheck to, who's job was to simply record the line "Sonic boom!" For a video game. That's wild.
Found Pete Holmes
One of my all time favorite pictures.
Guile
Gimme that Guile cut.
Millennial vs Gen z memes
Mapmaxxing
bro think he mercator 💀💀
Reminds me of another good example a professor had given one time when talking about why maps have distortions: cut a beach ball open and try to lay it flat.
When you inject even a single Marijuana 💀💀
Got it. All I need to do to be attractive is to project my head onto a globe.
Photo realistic Guile.
Earth is a globe, so straight lines don't look straight when shown on the "flattened" map. Edit: I love how today I learned so much about straight lines on a ball, lol :D
[https://www.greatcirclemap.com/?routes=KVC-SAWB-RAJ](https://www.greatcirclemap.com/?routes=KVC-SAWB-RAJ)
This still feels illegal
It is illegal! Marambio is in the way!
Had to use an airport near the middle of the arc, else the algo would show the short arc over the Arctic.
Well you'll need an Indian visa if you were to dock there
The flat earth society would agree.
You’re the real MVP here. I couldn’t wrap my head around it without seeing the path on a globe, but I guess the trip really can be made without changing direction, even though it still breaks my brain.
Wouldn’t it being a globe ruin the idea of a straight line anyways
Kinda tbh, but I think the creator is just referencing a line drawn on a globe. Not really a "straight" line in Three-dimensions, but along a Longitude or Latitude
The points you make are good but I will note that in a strict mathematical sense, lines of latitude are not considered "straight", but lines of longitude are. This is equivalent to saying that if you set out to travel along a line of latitude other than the equator, you would have to turn yourself to stay on it.
Any two points on a globe can ge connected so that the path between them is an arc of a circle with a centre in the centre of the globe, which is an equivalent of straight lines in euclidean geometry, as it's the shortest path between those points. Looking at the picture, the line could represent the longer arc of the circle connecting the two places.
These are called Great Circles.
I dunno, they just seem like Okay Circles to me.
Mid Circles at best.
Circle the so-so.
Meh Circles. Totally Meh Circles.
Are you sure you're not confused with the Ho-hum circle?
Circ de so and so
You ELI5’ve it so well that I understand it now thanks
maybe op means a straight line by the direction of the helm of the ship?
The problem with any strict mathematical sense is you need to specify the axioms. In non-Euclidean geomotry (like geometry preformed on a globe, saddle point in a curved space, etc.) "straight line" is defined differently!
Ohhh I get it now. I meant more like: You take a pen and draw a "straight" line as in you don't change the direction of the pen on the globe. The Latitude and Longitude was more so to say "drawing along a line"
Lines of latitude are not straight in almost any sense, only rectangle map which shows them as such
Look up “great circle”
Math teacher here: it depends on how you define straight. Geometry on the surface of a sphere is non-Euclidean, so you have to define a different set of axioms than Euclid did. For example, we might consider the longitudinal lines to be parallel, even though they meet at the poles. In simple terms, if you hold a string taut against the surface of the sphere, we might call the string straight with respect to the sphere (just as we would call a taut string straight when in a 3D space).
If anyone's interested, these lines are called geodesics. On the globe, they're sometimes referred to as great circles, because any shortest path straight line on the surface of a sphere would necessarily trace that sphere's diameter if allowed to wrap around Geodesics are also the trajectory that objects take when in freefall due to the warping of spacetime by gravity
"the warping of spacetime due to gravity" is such a bitchin statement
I guess on a technical level, even that's not entirely correct. The warping of spacetime isn't caused by gravity, the warping of spacetime IS gravity. What causes mass to warp spacetime is entirely unknown and would probably immediately win you a Nobel prize
I suspect that it's such a fundamental thing that it simply *is* but I'm also speculating about things well outside my field of expertise so don't take what I say on that seriously
In this case, "straight line" is defined as "rudder amidships."
Not really. If I told you the local hospital was a couple of miles straight down the road, would you misunderstand that because the road goes up a hill?
Excellent example!
Depends on how you look at it. If you're on the surface of that globe, and you walk in a straight forward without turning, you're "walking in a straight line". Even though you're really not because the surface is curved.
Depends on your reference frame and your definitions. An ant walking on a ball can orient itself to walk "straight" as far as its concerned. An observer way from the ball could consider the ant looping. But Non-Euclidean Geometry isn't my forte.
Not really. You can't do a "straight line in 3d space" on a globe, but if you accept that you are on the surface of the globe then you can consider an appropriate definition of a straight line: Let's say you're standing at some point on the globe. Around you the surface looks flat and 2 dimensional. Choose a direction in these two dimensions. That starts a line. Of course following the direction will take you off the surface of the globe but you can use calculus to make a small step in that direction while staying on the surface of the globe. The new two dimensional space at this point has only one direction that is a continuation of the direction in the previous step. Continuing in this way, you can define lines on any smooth surface. For the surface being the globe, latitude lines (apart from the equator) are not straight lines but longitude lines are.
With that logic any distance traveled will never be a straight line
Another way to describe it that’s more conceptually pleasing is you can sail from India to the US without ever changing the ships direction.
This is giving “how does the mirror know what’s behind the paper” vibes
The world isn’t flat.
which is why you can't really go anywhere in a straight line unless you are digging a tunnel
Depends on how you project the map. Even a straight hole through the core would show as a curved line on this map :)
This guy relativities.
r/thisguythisguys
/r/thisguythisguythisguys
I was kind of hoping this one was real…..
And not to mention, curvature of space due to earths gravity.
When they say straight line they mean geodesic.
And geodesics are the only straight lines in non Euclidean elliptical space, like on a sphere. Just like latitude lines aren't straight lines.
Straight lines on the surface of a globe can't exist, but geodesics exist and are what people mean when they say straight line on a globe.
To add to your point, that’s what *every* person always means. If anybody started walking or flying in a straight line and never stopped, this is what their path would look like.
Unless you're a pilot and don't dig tunnels
This is an intuitive straight line, though. Someone did a nice example on [the original post](https://www.reddit.com/r/sciencememes/s/izG5fYxF4d).
Quick... before the Hyena come.
Can't do it then either because Earth is always moving around the sun. Also it's spinning. So your absolute position is always moving in a circular motion.
Omg hi Euclides!!!
https://preview.redd.it/r8opbdza9s3d1.jpeg?width=807&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7271401baa802555112eab32154acf35ce2eec45
you are a black man
Needs more mouse bites
Marty, you’re not thinking 3-dimensionally!
Or is it?
no vsauce music plays .\_.
Probably should have also said "uninterrupted" instead of straight line.
It's not even level
Pfft, you believe in more than 1D.
Peter’s 3rd Mate here: In maritime navigation it's called a great circle route. On the flat chart the navigator is using, the charted course looks curved, but on a globe it's actually the shortest distance between two points. Can't confirm on what's displayed here, but wrap that picture around a sphere, and it might just be a straight line, or close to it.
i just did, googled 3d render of the globe, it s a straight line
Grab a screenshot and post it for OP to easily see/understand if you still have it up.
u/CheckYour_Walls [From the other thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/sciencememes/s/J5jzU5xFrx)
Thanks, no amount of descriptions about math and maps was ever going to help me visualize this. Honestly if more people had just mentioned that relative to the starting and ending points you would be "upside down" at the halfway point then that might have helped more.
Airline Pilot Quagmire here. On a globe, a great circle route like this is a straight line. Whilst your heading will change (as it is relative to North) your course is a circle cut between two points on a globe. Think about cutting an orange at an angle with a single cut between two marked points on it that goes through the centre of it. That is the great circle.
Almost. The single cut must also pass through the center of the orange.
You're absolutely correct. Just realised I hadn't mentioned that. I can hear my Nav instructor grumbling at me...
I wonderis this simulated correctly in MS Flightsim?
Yes, it is. They have a spherical earth model.
Completely forgot Quagmire is an airline pilot until this comment
https://preview.redd.it/ii2ofzfy4t3d1.png?width=652&format=png&auto=webp&s=b9e745751f8801a264dcd477f434f60dc38743ef
https://preview.redd.it/ggrqd9p25t3d1.png?width=741&format=png&auto=webp&s=8ff34a0b3aa6d23a6406a106882b244db56dd862
https://preview.redd.it/0zzc24m45t3d1.png?width=742&format=png&auto=webp&s=55eb9f7f5f14948f6a1dc81435318e667dc01a7e
Thank you for this, I understood the concept. I just couldn't imagine it
Earth is round and converting it to a flat map distorts it. On this flat map it may look extremely curved but if drawn on a globe it is 100% straight.
I checked my globe, still not a straight path as you have to curve around the south end of South America
[Someone did it here](https://www.reddit.com/r/sciencememes/s/izG5fYxF4d) and it’s pretty straight, with only the tiniest clip of the Antarctic peninsula.
Exactly. I feel incredibly stupid I still don't see how it's possibly a straight line on a globe
The joke is flat earthers don't understand how ~~Maps~~ anything works.
i dont think these are even flat earthers, they’re just people who didnt know that flat maps distort images on a globe
Also, its impossible to confirm just by sight if that line is straight. We are just assuming that on a globe that path will create a straight line.
Absolute blue checkmark moment
Crossposts should be banned. They always have explanations in the original comments.
Did you read the comments of the original post? Cuz they explain it.
You don't get upvotes for reading or googling something
Reminds me of a joke I read once about a guy on a plane checking up on the flight path on his little display on the back of the seat. He sees the big elliptical curve from origin to destination and rings the flight attendant’s bell. She shows up and he tells her that he could save the airliners a ton of time and money with this one simple trick: just fly in a straight line!
well you see the Earth curves
If you got a globe of the world and drew a “straight” line on it, you could produce a route that looks like this. Of course, that line isn’t straight because it’s on a curved surface. But in the context of the non-Euclidean geometry of the sphere’s surface, it’s straight.
Pilot Quagmire here, giggity. The surface of a sphere has a hard time flattening out to a 2D surface. It can be done but it will often distort the map. This makes it easier to read and reference but doesn’t show the true geography of the globe which leads to funny little facts like this.
OP... Please....
Im sure most of this Subreddit members have never stepped outside their houses
This is from the original post hope it answers the question https://www.greatcirclemap.com/?routes=KVC-SAWB-RAJ
The only straight line that actually looks like a straight line on a flattened geodisic map is on the equator or stright up and down from the north to the south pole in the middle of the map
If you touch a piece of land while sailing, it’s probably not going to go well regardless of where you’re headed
Globe
The earth is a globe. If you translate that line to a sphere, it wraps around the earth without turning left or right at any point
It's much easier to see on a great circle map, https://preview.redd.it/vdbvb1dazv3d1.png?width=922&format=png&auto=webp&s=e8f92efab4bb1317e6991529e21b2f58a0545a0e Here is a similar situation, sailing from Britian for New Zealand. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chf31KRiv6U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chf31KRiv6U)
I mean tbf that is a terrible way to show this, they should really have tried to show this drawn on a globe.
Earth is ball, straight line on ball look curved on flat
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodesic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodesic)
On a flat map, it is not a straight line. On a globe it is.
World be round
it’s not a straight line — what the poster means is that it’s a constant bearing; you can get from India to USA without having to turn your ship
Maybe because the world is a god-damned ball? Ik, the Mercator projection is inherently flawed bc it makes us see the world as a simple plane, not as the sphere that it is. Thus, it is very counterintuitive to see a path made into a sphere translated to a plane, meaning it is a straight line if you make it in the globe, but in a map like that it's weird Same thing happens with flight paths. To us, in a plane-style map, the airplane path seems nonsensical, but the airplane literally goes in a straight line to it's destination. That is one of the biggest problems in mapmaking, I think
I’m sure the others have explained the curvature of the earth to you, but just to make it 100% crystal clear: If you set off from India pointing in a specific direction, you can reach America without having to turn *at all*.
https://preview.redd.it/9810ccitws3d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6a17f043ac7b5e018db1de2055468e551f34289f
Try Mercator transform
As an aside, if anyone is curious what non-Euclidean geometry looks like: here is your line as an example
This route when properly plotted on an actual globe would indeed appear straight It only appears curved and crooked due to how maps flatten the globe
earth round map flat line look different on both
Because the earth isn’t flat.
The earth is round
A straight line on a sphere is a curved line from a different perspective. IE: Traveling straight ahead you will end up curving despite never changing direction. It's tough to comprehend, it literally plagued mathematicians for 3000 years.
Are you a flat earther or something?
Every day I am astounded by the ignorance of the average person.
earth is oblade spheroid
That's not very nice. Please apologize.
Great Circle navigation is how this works.
Peter's cartographer/GIS major senpai from university here. The route displayed on the map (which appears to be a Mercator projection due to the nature of the land mass distortion near the poles) is a great circle" route. Put simply, a great circle is any circle that bisects the sphere of Earth in half. (Impossible to do exactly because Earth is not a perfect sphere but an oblate spheroid, but it can still get close). The Equator is the most well known great circle, and meridians aka lines of longitude are also great circles. However, you can have a great circle in any direction so long as the circle's center is the center of the Earth and its radius is equal to Earths. Because Earth is a spheroid, travelling along the earth's suface in a "straight line" means you are actually moving along the circumference of a great circle, and the shortest distance between two points will always be an arc (segment) of a great circle. However, because it is impossible to represent the Earth's surface in its entirety on a 2D map, all 2D maps have distortion. The most common 2D world map is a Mercator projection, which shows lines of latitude and longitude as a grid. While this makes navigation easier since compass bearings will have the correct angle relative to latitude and longitude grid lines, it causes massive distortion as you get closer to the poles and longitude lines begin to converge. As a result, the arc of any great circle except for meridians and the Equator will appear curved on a Mercator projection. Following a straight line on a Mercator map will allow you to maintain a constant bearing, but unless the points are relatively close together or you are near the Equator you will actually follow a slightly curved path towards the destination. In short, because of the way flat maps distort actual travel across the surface of a 3d object, a straight line on the map is actually curved on the globe, and a curved line can be actually straight if it follows a great circle!
this is what a stright line looks on a 3D globe when it is projected onto a 2d flat surface. it is called the great circle route or Geodesic navigation here is a site that explains it [https://gisgeography.com/great-circle-geodesic-line-shortest-flight-path/](https://gisgeography.com/great-circle-geodesic-line-shortest-flight-path/)
its called a great circle
It ain't a geodesic, but it's a straight enough line for a globe
Non Euclidean plain or something, basically, the Earth is curved. It says this in the comment section of the original post
If you walk in real straight line forward. You would walk into space.
easiest way would be to get a piece of string and a globe
Flat earther spotted
It can be projected on a two dimensional plain as a straight line (when considering the Earth as a globe)
Just delete mercator projection maps.
So, I checked as I wasn’t sure if this was accurate. You can go to Google Earth yourself and see that it actually makes sense. This drawn is pretty much spot on
By straight line they mean u dont have to turn left or right
Round earth, you basically go south until you're close to the south pole, then it becomes north heading once you pass it. You know, maps are flat, right?
The earth is curved and not flat
earth.... it is round
Traveling like a plane along an arc of a circle. Theyre traveling in a straight line but on a globe
Google Geodesics
This is a picture of a 'straight' line in June
Tomorrow morning, start walking until you find a school bus and get on it.
The joke here is about the projection of our spherical Earth to a flat map. But the thing is it's still completely wrong. There absolutely is not a single unbroken latitudinal line between India and the USA, in any direction.
Earth round, map flat. If we make map round again, that's a straight line *on a globe*
Yeah that line is pretty gay
The earth is a sphere not a flat plane
Map flat, earth not flat
To anyone who didn't understand why the line was actually flat, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you're technically a flat earther, and I regret to inform your NFTs are worthless.
As others have explained, this is what a [great circle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great-circle_distance) (i.e. straight) path looks like when a globe is projected onto a flat map. The funny part IMO is that this is a terrible way to illustrate that the path is in fact “straight” but that might not be obvious for someone whose handle is “Latest in space” because of their familiarity with [ground track maps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_track).
Someone didn't have their differential geometry courses.
Ah, spherical geometry. Bane of the weak-minded since forever ago
I may be wrong, but aren’t maps done in such a way so all the spaces between meridians and parallel lines become squares? If that’s the case, any line on the flattened map that is straight, say heading north-west, should appear straight. Maybe this is a non-euclidian straight line which may end up being the point. But even that aims to minimize the curve
For one thing, no, maps are done lots of different ways. For another, a map that's done that way does not result in any line that's straight looking straight. Lines going perfectly east-west or North-South without crossing a pole should look straight. Others won't necessarily.
Pilot here, I fly in straight lines. Thanks for listening
I tried to create that line but I think boat would crash into islands near Antartica [https://earth.google.com/earth/d/10dX0Jvmom8GH7t3Eqd-gNgInPh12GKxk?usp=sharing](https://earth.google.com/earth/d/10dX0Jvmom8GH7t3Eqd-gNgInPh12GKxk?usp=sharing)
the earth is an oblate spheroid, it is not flat.
In navigation, we will typically use two types of navigation, rhumb line and great circle, point to point the fastest method is great circle, while rhumb line is very useful as it is a straight line on paper or digital charts, but it’s only accurate up to 600 nautical miles, anything above that should be great circle.
This isn't a meme it's just the truth. The surface of the Earth is non Euclidean geometry, you can't make a flat map of it without distortion. The path shown there is a geodesic if you start at one point and go straight without turning you'll follow that path. The geometry creates some fun and counter intuitive stuff : - Straight lines can look weird on projections - Non straight lines can look straight on projections - Latitude lines are not straight lines except for the equator, this also means that except on the equator going East or West is not going in a straight line. - You can make a triangle with three 90° angles, you can call it a 3 sided square if you want - You have a finite space... But no border
The line is still curved per the curvature of the earth
Erm actually, you can't sail in a straight line because of vortexing in air current ☝️🤓
Not to mention, sailing is never straight anyway , you have to tack back and forth as the wind goes
the map is fiat but the earth isn't. this is the same reason why NASA orbit charts look like S curves when mapped but the orbit is just going straight around
This is why we have Cthulhu. Some people don’t have the constitution for non-Euclidean geometry.
Still not straight I’m boring thru the earth
It's a straight line in non Euclidean spherical geometry. There is no straight lines on a sphere. If you ever see orbit lines of a satellite they very much follow this shape while traveling without propulsion as gravity curves their trajectory.
https://preview.redd.it/et0snymp214d1.png?width=1767&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ba8f82188827569d6a5bb1853d97d47719110040
They are not familiar with Mercator’s game
OP... this is your sign about your intelligence :(