in case there are others like me who have to see what it looks like on a Mercator projection map:
this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2025
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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?
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).
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The word "can" Is doing some heavy lifting here. I mean, there is a difference between theoretically possible and actually being done.
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Don’t the circumpolar winds essentially prevent this, or at least make it really impractical?
Sorry, can't hear you down here in my submarine
DON'T THE CURCUMPOLAR WINDS ESSENTIALLY PREVENT THIS, OR AT LEAST MAKE IT REALLY IMPRACTICAL?
Ping.
Sailing near the south pole is not advisable, you might die. But thats also true for many other things, so whatever.
No diesel sub is going to have the range to make that trip. And NZ doesn't allow nuclear subs in its waters.
nuclear subs are all over the place and could even be in their waters with out them realising
It's true I've got all the locations of the nuclear subs right here and this conjecture is totally correct.
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The only place you can't sail is directly into the wind. You can go all the other places eventually but it's a lot of back and forth.
Tacking back and forth is kinda the opposite of a straight line though, isn't it?
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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.
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That southern ocean is brutal tho
Especially going the wrong direction!
It'd be less bad on the return trip, but then you're fighting the trade winds and the Canary current instead.
Just rename it as Pacific Ocean and voila, no storm hence the name!
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.
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You can plot a course in a straight line. Unfortunately, weather.
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
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Now all we need is some insane person with a kayak.
I volunteer— not like you go through most dangerous sea passage in the world or anything…
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I got this far on the Wikipedia and gave up:
On a curved surface, the concept of straight lines is replaced by a more general concept of geodesics, curves which are locally straight with respect to the surface. Geodesics on the sphere are great circles, circles whose center coincides with the center of the sphere.
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There is also a route that can be drawn from Halifax, Nova Scotia on the Canadian east coast on the Atlantic ... head a bit south east and without touching land and only going over the ocean, you can end up on the west coast of British Columbia, in Canada on the Pacific coast.
I used to reference a website that showed that ... but now I can't seem to find it. :(
Another fun one is to ask someone if they were to take off in an airplane from Miami and fly due south, which South American countries would they fly over?
The answer is none of them. You end up missing the entire continent because you are too far west.
You hit Panama first, but small portions of Ecuador and Peru are west of Miami (80.2 degrees west). The broader point that South America is much farther east than many Americans think is definitely true, though.
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Hopefully someone shares this with Geowizard, ultimate straight line challenge.
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.
Straight line? That looks hella curved, innit? Can't fool us with a globe. A flat map, maybe. But not a globe. Despite it being a 2D representation of a globe
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Comms Officer: Sirs, we still have quite a bit of time to change course.
Red: But we're going straight.
Purple: Yeah. Turning's no fun. Why is this happening? Make it not happen.
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