this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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Low IQ: it's not a straight line
Medium IQ: it's a geodesic on a sphere, so it is a straight line
High IQ: it's not a straight line
It's a straight line through non-euclidean space
unfortunately in reality it is a curved line on a sphere
In actual reality there would be wind and water currents diverting any ship sailing that route from the depicted "line" anyway so the whole argument is pointless
The only straight line paths in the universe are followed by electrostatically uncharged non-accelerating objects in free fall in a vacuum. Or massless particles.
What if we assume the ship is actually a spherical cow
Nuh uh. My fifth grade math teacher told me that if I drew a line with an arrow on graph paper and no other line intersected it, that it would continue on into infinity!
Whole Universe eh? That exists and is bounded on a curved space time.
I'm just joking, but you can really take this to the extreme lol
Spacetime is curved. Inertial paths through spacetime are straight.
Euclidean space is not the only space where straight lines are possible.