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floor have you ever just sat on a beach
and looked out across the ocean and just
thought to yourself man if I went in a
straight line from where I am now how
far would I go until I hit more land or
from where you are right now as you're
watching this video how far could you
travel in a straight line on land before
you run out of land maybe I'm just weird
but I've been thinking lately about
what's the furthest straight line you
can move across the Earth's surface in
both of these categories it's a little
confusing to really wrap your head
around this one because we're often used
to imagining the earth in a
2-dimensional space like a map so most
of the time thinking about this you'll
come up with pretty boring answers like
maybe Australia to South America but
when we transform our thinking into a
globe but the answers get a lot more
interesting and a lot more crazy but
before all the hate comments come
pouring in though it's true that's no
distance between two points across the
Earth's surface is truly flats
this may seem true enough on a map but
on a globe with a more correct shape a
line from point A to point B more
resembles an arc in empty space if you
delete the globe in geometry these arcs
form part what's called a great circle
basically an imaginary circle drawn
around an entire sphere the longest
straight line across an ocean without
touching any land therefore has to lie
across an arc on one of these great
circles around the Earth the first I
need to share with you some equally
interesting lines between points that
you probably would never imagine by
simply looking at map and first among
those is the straight line across water
connecting italy with venezuela yes
that's right on a map this looks dumb
but here's how it actually works out in
reality you only have about a six mile
stretch of shoreline around the town of
palmy in italy to work with here but if
you stay within the borders of the line
you'll eventually make it all the way to
Venezuela you're gonna just squeeze
through the northern part of the Strait
of Gibraltar and then just barely miss
the island of Madeira before finally
landing over on the others
but it is possible which I guess helps
explain why Venezuela is named after
Venice and has so many Italians you can
also start in Norway and sail in a
straight line up and eventually arrive
in Antarctica over on the other side of
the world without ever touching any
other land this seems weird but again
here's how it actually plays out you
have to start in a very narrow stretch
of coast again on the western side of
Norway and head so far north that you
eventually begin heading south you cross
between Svalbard and Greenland just
barely squeezed through the Bering
Strait between Alaska and Russia you'll
just barely squeeze through again when
you're passing through the Aleutian
Islands and a long way later across the
Pacific you'll barely skirt past Samoa
but from there on it's a straight shot
all the way over to Antarctica but
unfortunately it's not the part of
Antarctica which is already claimed by
Norway which is a big shame in my
opinion it lands instead in the only
part of Antarctica which no country in
the world currently claims yet so I feel
like this is a pretty good qualification
for Norway to just call dibs now you
could probably spend forever looking at
a globe and drawing lines between points
just hoping that you'll eventually
discover the longest one but forever
isn't exactly an understatement on a
global map with a resolution of 1 point
85 kilometers you'll encounter over 230
billion possible great circles that loop
around it and each of these great
circles consists of 20 1,600 individual
points which add together to form over 5
trillion possible points for you to
consider finding the longest possible
straight line and all of that is like
finding a needle in a haystack or you
could create a computer program to just
do everything for you like these two
guys did the algorithm that they
developed to prove the longest straight
line across water was nothing short of
genius they exploited a technique that's
known as branch and bound towards
cartography and it essentially works by
considering every potential solution to
a problem as branches of a tree rather
than evaluating each solution
individually the algorithm simply
an entire branch with the optimal
solution found inside every branch has a
better or a worse solution to the
problem so if the algorithm detects a
worse solution it discards the entire
branch but if it contains a better
solution it replaces it in place of the
old one this process continued until BAM
the computer came back with the proven
longest straight line between two points
of land on the Earth's surface and it's
so weird one if you start in southern
Pakistan and head south you can
eventually hit Russia without ever
touching another piece of land which
looks super weird and super click bTW on
a map but here's how it actually checks
out you begin in sonmi on e in
Balochistan Pakistan and head across
this line go past nearby Somalia so try
not to get captain Phillip belonged away
once past that you'll cross between
Africa and Madagascar and pass through
the doldrums for the first time if you
brought a sailboat with you you could
get screwed pretty hard here because the
wind can sometimes stop for weeks on end
but hopefully you brought a motor that
didn't get stolen by the pirates and
you've gotten yourself through so now
you cross the Atlantic before sliding in
through the Drake Passage between South
America and Antarctica which is quite
possibly the most dangerous body of
water in the world wind speeds can get
up to 80 miles per hour here which helps
to generate huge waves extremely strong
currents and with the added complexity
of poor visibility year-round you may
wish that you had just gotten kidnapped
by the pirates back near Somalia the
survival odds may be higher depending on
how crappy your boat is anyway if you
get through that you only have to sail
across literally the entire Pacific
Ocean and through the most empty part of
the planet you'll be pretty nearby the
point Nemo here which is literally the
furthest point away in the ocean from
any land if you run into trouble out
here
the closest other humans to you will
often be the astronauts occasionally
orbiting above you aboard the
International Space Station
you'll be several days two weeks away
from any actual help that could come to
you from an inhabited part of the world
and that's even if you had the ability
to signal for help so like try not to do
anything dumb or you'll be wishing for
the pirates once again you also have to
pass back through the doldrums over on
this side of the world here
so sailboats run an extra hazard of
getting trapped again but when you
finally get to the other side of the
line you'll hit land in a cut against
key district of the Kamchatka Krai in
Russia after sailing across lovely 80%
of the entire Earth's circumference and
more importantly achieving something
that nobody before in history has ever
done plenty of people have
circumnavigated the globe before but
that's boring compared to this so get
out there and do your research and
planning and do something great like
this of course planning and research for
anything takes both practice and efforts
if you're going to go on an adventure
sailing in a straight line across the
ocean or if you want to study a globe to
find your own beer lines to impress
people at the bar with you need to
understand how the planet works as in
what is the actual shape of Earth how
does the weather work or how does the
earth rotate but all of these things are
also concepts that you can learn about
in brilliant physics of the everyday
course brilliant is the best place to
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for watching and I'll see you again next
week