Author: Frank Jacobs / Source: Big Think
- What links a small town in Portugal and a huge port city in China?
- The answer may surprise even inhabitants of both places: the world’s longest straight line over land
- That line and its maritime equivalent were determined not by exploration but by calculation
What connects the Chinese port of Quanzhou with Sagres, a tiny parish in southern Portugal?
No, it’s not the New Silk Route, the Sino-European rail link inaugurated in 2017 (1). The answer is so arcane that it will surprise most inhabitants of either place: they are the extreme points of the world’s longest straight line over land (2).Following the course of that line would require directional rectitude of the highest degree. Travellers would have to forgo the relative comfort of well-worn roads and mountain passes and traverse daunting peaks and inhospitable deserts – not to mention innumerable private houses and public buildings.
Suggested route
Image: Reddit
Longest sailable straight line on Earth, as suggested by Reddit user kepleronlyknows.
They would cross 15 countries; skirting Madrid and Switzerland’s alpine highlands; cutting off a corner of Austria and passing just north of Auschwitz in Poland; barely touching Ukraine and slicing through Belarus; travelling through Russia and Kazakhstan before hitting China and reaching the Formosa Strait; but not before dipping into Mongolia twice.
Because the globe is round and this map is not, the world’s longest straight line over land – like all others long enough – looks like a bendy one on this image. For anyone walking the line, though, it would have been straight as a ruler, and, at the end of that trip, close to 20,000 miles long.
Threading the needle
Image: Chabukswar & Mukherjee
Algorithmically correct: the world’s longest sailable straight line goes from Pakistan to Kamchatka
The world’s longest straight line on land was calculated by researchers Rohan Chabukswar of the United Technologies Research Centre (UTRC) in Cork (Ireland) and Kushal Mukherjee at IBM’s Research Laboratory in New Delhi (India).
In a paper published earlier this year (and last updated on 25 December), they set out their solution to the question of finding the world’s longest straight lines over land and at sea. That question sounds simple enough, but isn’t: “This is an optimisation problem, rendered chaotic by the presence of islands and lakes, and indeed the fractal nature of the coasts”.
They were prompted by a map that had raised a lot of discussion since its first publication on Reddit in 2012. Posted by user kepleronlyknows, it purports to show the longest possible straight-line sailing route in the…
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