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in case there are others like me who have to see what it looks like on a Mercator projection map:
Wow. I can’t believe my perspective of the world is that distorted. It makes me want to only look at it in 3D. If we’ve all mainly looked at Mercator projections our whole lives our sense of where everything is relative to everything else and what direction is completely off.
People complain about the proportional sizing of Mercator but the sense of direction it gives us is completely broken. I think the average person knows it’s off and people think there is an error factor to consider that a really straight like might be a little squiggly. But nope. This made me realize the Mercator gives pretty much zero accurate sense of direction if real distance is involved.
People complain about the proportional sizing of Mercator but the sense of direction it gives us is completely broken.
With respect, this is silly. People complain about the proportional sizing of the Mercator projection because disproportionate sizing is literally the only problem with the Mercator projection.
The sense of direction being off has got literally nothing to do with Mercator. That’s an inherent drawback of trying to project a three dimensional globe onto a 2D image. Literally every single projection has this exact problem, in one form or another. It is considered ot be an acceptable trade-off for not having to work with globes all the time.
Stop looking for yet more baseless reasons to bash the Mercator projection, which is a perfectly reasonable and acceptable projection to use within its intended usecase (which this specific example literally is).
Short distances are fine, and obviously directly east/west are fine. Directly north/south is also pretty alright, but, as you move further from the equator, any east or west movement is covering less distance, and vice versa.
Right. That is the size issue. I’m saying there is a substantial direction issue as well.
Can we have a map projection/grid system where this uh, great circle, is the prime meridian, defines the new ‘poles’ via another 90 degree orthogonal great circle that touches both actual poles?
So would there be turning involved still orrrrr?
You’re constantly, gradually turning downward, technically.
Actually not turning would be falling. You are constantly being turned upward.
what
no, that’s a straight line
No. Similarly, if you look at how planes fly, they fly in what looks like arcs, going north and then back south. On a mercator projection in looks longer, but it is the shortest straight (ignoring the curve of the earth) line.
If it makes you feel better, the line is actually curved along the surface of the earth, you know, if you believe in a spherical earth.
Nah. I’ve come to believe it’s shaped like Dick Cheney’s black, twisted heart.
A void doesn’t have a shape
The earth is obviously a sac of 1 dimensional space.
Even better, imho, you can sail in a direct line from OG Zeeland (Netherlands) to New Zealand.
Can you, though? You’d have to squeeze through the narrow English Channel first, and that would probably require some turns.
Never mind the English Channel, Drake Passage will probably kill you.
How bad can it be, really. I’ve got a boat. I can swim. We’re good.
“This, then, was the Drake Passage, the most dreaded bit of ocean on the globe—and rightly so. Here nature has been given a proving ground on which to demonstrate what she can do if left alone.” -Lansing
Below 40 degrees south there is no law; below 50 degrees south there is no God -sailing proverb
Yes
You can go north across the arctic ocean (not sure if it gets ice free enough) and through the bering strait, but you end up around 500 kilometres away from new zealand.
You can also build a nearly straight railway going from California through Canada and Alaska all the way to China.
That’d be awesome. That probably wouldn’t work because it would take 100 years for California to build their first high speed rail
The USA-Russia border crossing might prove troublesome. Also, keeping railways running through the middle of Siberia in an operational state all year round would be challenging.
Also, keeping railways running through the middle of Siberia in an operational state all year round would be challenging.
Definitely don’t let Deutsche Bahn handle that part
Die Verbindung fällt heute aus. Grund dafür ist 1mm Schneefall auf den Gleisen.
Ahh, die vier Feinde der Deutschen Bahn. Frühling, Sommer, Herbst und Winter.
I believe Vivaldi composed this one.
You can plot a course in a straight line. Unfortunately, weather.
Only with an icebreaker
I’m no sailing historian, but that’s probably how they actually discovered New Zealand.
“Heya mates, how’bout we be goin’ straight ahead 'til back’ome we arrrggggh!!”
The Polynesians took the long route.
The European explorers actually took a very similar route, so this seems to be an obvious option for sailors doing island hops in that area.
One of the few world maps with New Zealand on it.
Hum, so it’s a straight line, but it’s curved, and the compas turns half way.
Well, yeah…if you want a line that is straight in 3 dimensions then any point on earth at sea level to any other point earth at sea level will require you to go below the surface of the planet.
Y’all, I found the Flat Earther!
Don’t make fun of flat earthers, their ideology is spreading all over the globe!
deleted by creator
Math nerds are going to have a field day with this statement haha.
straight line
So the azimut you set to your compass would be a constant, right??
/s/j
It’s a geodesic; a straight line in spherical geometry.
This is my new favorite globe trivia.
This isn’t actually surprising, like in a vacuum it is but when you conceder that each point on earth has a full 360 degrees of points that means a line can be drawn to every possible point on earth unless something happens to be in the way, the Earth’s surface is 70% water so you only have a 30% chance of hitting something that is already low but it gets much much lower since we know this is cherry picked as the most exaggerated example you only need one instance on the entire earth of a point that can reach around it out of all the infinite points.
30% wouldn’t be a lot if the land were all even-sized islands, but it’s all in big chunks; most of which is in a pair of unbroken masses that runs from more or less the North Pole to the Drake Passage. There aren’t any straight lines from the British Isles to Hawaii or to Indonesia, or even to Australia if I’m doing the geography correctly; nor are there any straight lines from Madagascar to Greenland, or from Iceland to anywhere in the Pacific, at least by liquid water.
Add in the fact that we’re not used to seeing the roundness of the Earth from any perspective other than along the equator and split on the date line, and it’s really just something that puts two things into a category together that don’t seem like they should be connected.
It’s like the fact that Mercury is (on average) the closest planet to Venus, but also to Earth, Jupiter, even Neptune. Ok, yes, that shouldn’t be a surprise, because it’s the closest to the sun and the sun is always in the middle; but it’s not the way we usually look at the Solar System, and also we know that Neptune is so far away from Mercury that it’s mind-boggling that Mercury could ever be the closest planet to it. It’s very unintuitive based on our usual perspective and existing understanding.
why do we have to frame info as “cursed”? so cringe
It’s not cursed, it’s bussin frfr
The word “can” Is doing some heavy lifting here. I mean, there is a difference between theoretically possible and actually being done.
Yeah, it’s going through the most dangerous water passage in the world IIRC, between South America and Antarctica. We do go through it fairly regularly at this point, but it’s still not “safe.”
[PROCEEDS INTO HURRICANE]
Anf also probably a bit of the antarctic ice sheet
Dexter?
