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Slicing Earth, Carefully: On Wet and Dry Great and Small Circles
- DrScump 11y agoThe stated premise: "Can you slice Earth flat through its centre while touching no land?" is at odd with the results. None of the examples goes through the center (the core - either geographical or center of mass). The solutions are circular surface traces assuming a two-dimensional projection. Interesting, nonetheless, but the opening premise could use a reword. Maybe, "can you find a region such that a flat plane would cut the Earth without touching land?"
- ColinWright 11y agoI think you are mistaken. The solutions as drawn are circles on an appropriate representation of the Earth, such that the places on the circle form a Great Circle when mapped back onto the sphere, and hence do define a slice through the centre. In particular, in the gallery of the locally optimal Great Circles he is using an azimuthal equidistant projection, and so the circles in the diagrams do correspond to Great Circles on the sphere.
- Sharlin 11y agoThe results show that there's no great circle that touches no dry land. They give the largest (small) circles that do fulfill the condition, and additionally give the great circles that touch the minimum amount of land.