When Your "Straight Line" Depends On Dimension

When Your "Straight Line" Depends On Dimension
map-projections-memes, geography-memes, earth-science-memes, mercator-projection-memes, great-circle-memes | ScienceHumor.io

The meme beautifully captures the collision between map projections and spatial reasoning! The original tweet claims you can sail from India to the USA in a "straight line" without touching land, showing a curved path on a flat map. But here's the mind-bender: that curved line is actually geodesically straight in 3D space!

When sailing across a spherical Earth, the shortest path (a "straight line" in navigation terms) follows what's called a great circle. On flat Mercator projections, these great circles appear curved because... well, you're squishing a sphere onto a rectangle!

The commenters missing this concept is pure comedy gold. It's like watching someone argue that the Earth is flat while standing on a globe!