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1313ed01today at 10:43 AM3 repliesview on HN

But what would flat-earthers consider the longest possible paths to be? Not the ones shown in the article, presumably?


Replies

astrobe_today at 3:19 PM

They would tell us we are contradicting ourselves because none of them are straight lines in the traditional sense, if we really believe the Earth is a sphere. Don't underestimate trolls ;-)

madcaptenortoday at 12:17 PM

Over water, probably something like the entire 60th parallel south.

Over land, I think you want to start near the westernmost point of the African continent and thread the needle of the Isthmus of Suez, and stay south of the Caspian Sea. At least in the projection gcmap.com uses (plate carree - essentially the x-coordinate and y-coordinate are just raw longitude and latitude), this keeps you south of Lake Baikal and allows you to get very far east in far eastern Russia. Something like 17.5 N, 16 W to 69 N, 178.5 E seems to work:

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=17.5n16w-21.79n0.21e-26.08n16.4...

Of course this depends on the projection you use!

This is different from the Portugal-to-China path that is the longest over land in reality, which a flat-earther would have crossing the Mediterranean.

show 2 replies
Anduiatoday at 1:27 PM

It would be a straight line (in their official map) from the south of Portugal to Kamchatka (east Russia)