• bstix@feddit.dk
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      4 months ago

      The picture was about sailing the longest direct line.

      It’s not the longest anyway, but that’s what it was about. Technically one could sail infinitely many times around Antarctica in a straight line.

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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        4 months ago

        around Antarctica in a straight line

        No, that’s not Earth’s great circle, you’ll be turning slightly. It only seems straight on most map projections because they want latitudes to be horizontal.

        • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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          4 months ago

          It would, however, seem like a straight line to whoever was on the boat, because they’d be traveling due west the whole time, and the course corrections they’d have to make to keep going west would look the same as course corrections needed to account for wind, ocean currents, etc.

          • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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            4 months ago

            I know but you need to be the right amount of pedantic. Too little and any sufficiently large curve seems straight, too much and you point out that there is no straight line on the surface of a sphere.

        • bstix@feddit.dk
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          4 months ago

          Well, I stand corrected. I guess we’ll need to wait for the ice on the North pole to melt before we can make a more stupid voyage.

    • Varven@lemmy.worldOP
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      4 months ago

      Because going in that route would make it touch land which in the twitter post it says straight line without touching land

        • supamanc@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          India. You would have to set off somewhat perpendicular to the Indian coastline to be perfectly straight.

          • ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
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            4 months ago

            For some reason I don’t think this is true.

            A straight line connecting two things does not necessarily have to connect to said things perpendicular to their border.

            • supamanc@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              Yeah but, I’m talking about this particular case, not making a mathematical rule. You have to move away from the coast, and then cannot turn, so you have to head towards Africa. You can’t set off toward Australia. Although I hadn’t considered that you can just move the starting point. So, there’s that.

        • Bassman1805@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Alaska, Canada, Russia, a few on the -stans.

          This is the longest straight-line all-water route on earth.

  • Noble Shift@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    THAT would be one god damn brutal sail. Both horns, Southern Atlantic crossing followed up by the Indian Ocean.

    The range of foulies you would need to bring would be 3/4 of your pack. Foulies underwear and A sock (you’re going to lose one anyways)

    • anachronist@midwest.social
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      4 months ago

      I assume you mean “both capes.” While this line does come within a few thousand miles of the Horn of Africa, that’s not known as an especially hard sailing area but maybe for pirates.

      Sailing this line in the other direction would be considerably harder.

  • lugal@sopuli.xyz
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    4 months ago

    Globists will argue that on a globe this is a straight line. Seen these arguments before, don’t work on me

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    There was a conversation I read a while ago that showed how a sailboat could travel a straight line over water from Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada, travel southeast and end up on the west coast of British Columbia.

    Basically sailing from the east coast of Canada to the west coast of Canada in a straight line.

    • HereIAm@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Please correct my layman understanding if I’m wring here. But isn’t everything traveling in a straight line until an external force is applied. For example the earth orbiting the sun is traveling in a straight line in a curved apacetime. Also if you jump, the moment you leave the ground until you touch it again coming back down you were traveling in a straight line.

      • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        4 months ago

        In my understanding, since gravity is acting on us, an external force is applied when we jump. That’s why a jump is a parabola. “Gravity’s Rainbow”

        • Zink@programming.dev
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          4 months ago

          What they are getting at is that gravity is not a force so much as your mass trying to travel in a straight line through curved spacetime. The weight you feel is because the surface of the earth is in your way.

          Get into low earth orbit and that straight path has you going in apparent circles around the planet. You are very much within the earth’s gravity but you don’t feel “weight” because the surface of the earth is no longer blocking your path. You still have mass and inertia and all that, of course.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 months ago

        Also if you jump, the moment you leave the ground until you touch it again coming back down you were traveling in a straight line.

        relative to the body of earth, including its rotation it would be an arc path, and including it’s tilt it would be 3d, if we also include the travel around the sun in orbit, that elongates it around the orbit, so uh.

    • kazaika@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Space-time itself is curved, therefore everything is moving in a straight line, it only appears to be curved to the outside observer

    • Angry_Autist (he/him)@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Not true, as when space bends, it bends the rulers and compasses too. We experience no spatial distortion.

      A person traveling near the speed of light doesn’t feel like time is slower for them (but it is and we can measure it)

      The principle is equivalent.

      That said, it’s not a straight line in any topology standard I am aware of.

      Sure you could CREATE a topology framework where this would be considered a straight line, but there is no real world model that could come even close without so much mass being concentrated in static relative areas, and EVEN THEN it would only be straight for a predetermined instant before the mass deforming spacetime began interacting with each other.

      That’s the problem with spacetime deformations, almost no layman takes into account the ridiculous amounts of static mass to make those strange topologies.

      • Urist@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        If anyone wants to grasp the basics: here is some fun reading (leading on to some beautiful math). Changing the idea of parallelity leads to hyperbolic geometry and other fun stuff. :)

  • xlash123@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    Low IQ: it’s not a straight line

    Medium IQ: it’s a geodesic on a sphere, so it is a straight line

    High IQ: it’s not a straight line

          • Wilzax@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            In actual reality there would be wind and water currents diverting any ship sailing that route from the depicted “line” anyway so the whole argument is pointless

            The only straight line paths in the universe are followed by electrostatically uncharged non-accelerating objects in free fall in a vacuum. Or massless particles.

            • DogWater@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              Whole Universe eh? That exists and is bounded on a curved space time.

              I’m just joking, but you can really take this to the extreme lol

              • Wilzax@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                Spacetime is curved. Inertial paths through spacetime are straight.

                Euclidean space is not the only space where straight lines are possible.

            • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              4 months ago

              Nuh uh. My fifth grade math teacher told me that if I drew a line with an arrow on graph paper and no other line intersected it, that it would continue on into infinity!