Researchers elucidate the longest "straight running route" on the planet and "the way to go straight"

byAlasdair Elmes

When traveling on land or sea on the earth, how long is the distance that you can go straight ahead without hitting the lake, the island, the continent on the way, and reach the other place? That was investigated by researchers.United TechnologiesThis research, conducted by research centers and scientists from IBM Research in India, was completed in 2014 on an overseas bulletin board ·redditIt is based on the content posted by the user at.

[1804.07389] Longest Straight Line Paths on Water or Land on the Earth
https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.07389

This ocean path will take you on the longest straight-line journey on Earth | Science | AAAS
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/ocean-path-will-take-you-longest-straight-line-journey-earth

These Are The Longest Straight Lines You Can Sail And Drive On Earth | IFLScience
http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/these-are-the-longest-straight-lines-you-can-sail-and-drive-on-earth/

The beginning of the thing was the posting that in 2012 the user called kepleronlyknows to the overseas bulletin board reddit "The longest route from Pakistan to Eastern Russia can travel without hitting the continent when it moves straight on the earth" about. The researchers were interested in whether this content was scientifically correct.

The longest route that the route marked in red can travel linearly on the earth, the distance is 20,000 miles (about 32,000 km). Although the line seems to be drawing a curve because the earth is round, it is said that it is actually a straight line.

The longest straight line: you can sail almost 20,000 miles in a straight line from Pakistan to the Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia. [720 x 360]fromr / MapPorn

In order to scientifically confirm this fact, researchers first have a possibilityGreat circle courseI will try to find out while repeating trial and error. A large circle course is the shortest route connecting two points on the earth. However, the problem with this method was that there were 233 million possible thought routes considered 1.8 km wide.

Therefore, in order to derive the answer,Branch and bound methodWe used an algorithm called. This algorithm tests all possible subgroups of large circle cores and then repeatedly investigates repeatedly likely lines that are likely to be "longest" while making fine adjustments. It is said that this work will be completed in about 10 minutes on a standard notebook PC.

And as a result of the investigation, we started a sandy beach coast of Pakistan, passed between Madagascar and the African continent, further through the narrow gap between South America and Antarctica, crossing the Pacific Ocean across the Alaska archipelago and head north-northwest Opposite, it turned out that the straight line distance of reddit's posted route to arrive in the Karaginsky area of ​​Russia is the longest.


Also, if you are limited to traveling on land, start from Quanzhou City in China, go through Mongolia, Russia, Europe, PortugalSagresRoute to arrive at the longest is the longest. The distance is 10,241.1 km, and it will cross 15 countries. If you drive this route by car, it will take about a week by nonstop and it will take about 3 months if you walk. Of course, if it limits it to "available way" it may be a different result.


Researchers said, "This problem was tackled purely as a mathematical task," "I do not recommend moving the route found this time with ships or cars."