"Straight Line Sailing: Viral Map Stuns Social Media and Elon Musk"
A map showing a straight line route from India to the USA has captivated social media users, despite the practical challenges posed by ocean currents and Antarctic ice sheets. The map, which appears curved on a 2D surface, is actually a straight line when drawn on a globe. The Mercator projection, commonly used in maps, distorts the shape of landmasses and makes straight lines appear curved. In 2012, a Reddit user identified an even longer straight line sea journey from Pakistan to Russia, inspiring computer scientists to develop an algorithm to find the longest possible routes on Earth.