This Is the Longest Straight Line You Can Sail Without Touching Land

RealLifeLore brings us the surprising answer to this complicated question.
Loukia Papadopoulos

RealLifeLore seeks to answer the question of what is the longest straight line you can sail without touching land. However, the YouTuber points out that since the Earth is a globe the real question becomes what is the longest straight arc you can sail without touching land.

You might think it is something boring like from Australia to South America but the truth is a lot more complicated and exciting. 

That longest line lies across an arc of the great circles. The great circles are long circles that run all across the Earth.

However, there are many great circles to say the least. There are over 230 billion possible great circles that loop the Earth.

Going through all of them to find the longest sailing arc without touching land is near impossible. That's why two clever researchers built a computer model to analyze the data for them.

Most Popular