In 2012, a Reddit user Patrick Anderson has published a map on which was shown the longest video that I can follow the ocean and not see land. He has provided no evidence that his data is correct, and a couple of researchers decided to develop an algorithm that would find the longest line, not only on water but also on land.
Rohan Chabukswar from the Research center of United Technologies Ireland and Kushal Mukherjee of IBM Research India has created an algorithm that was to confirm that the route from Pakistan to Siberia really is the longest straight line in which may accompany the seafarer. On a two-dimensional map, the route doesn’t look like video, but do not forget that the Earth is a sphere.
To calculate this route was not the easiest task. The researchers got a card with a high enough resolution NOAA. They had to check 5 038 848 000 000 points possible. This 5 trillion 38 billion 848 million points. Have Chabukswar and Mukherjee did not have sufficient computing power for calculations, and for this reason, scientists have used branching algorithms for solving optimization problems. This approach reduces the time of solving the problem, breaking it down into smaller parts and subsets.
With the help of this amazing technology, scientists have made calculations on ordinary personal computer for 10 minutes. Surprisingly, the result was the same that was published by Reddit user in 2012. The length of this route is 32 089,7 kilometers.
In the same way Chabukswar and Mukherjee decided to find the longest line that can go on land without colliding with large bodies of water. The length of the straight was 11 241 kilometers. This video runs from China through Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, France, Spain and ends in Portugal.
It should be noted that the route from China to Portugal might not be the most optimal, as the calculations do not take into account mountains and rivers. The same can be said about the route through the ocean.
How to look like the long straight, on which one can cross the ocean and land
Ernest Vasilevskiy