Eli5| If you were to drive the *straightest* highway at *immaculate* speeds, would you be able to visualize the curvature of the earth?

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Assuming you wouldn’t explode from going mach ba-gillion in a Camry, and other things barred by a neat thing called physics, if you were going like a hundred thousand miles in a minute, or whatever it takes to clear the entire U.S in an hour. Would it all be straight? Or would the road comically start bending downwards?

In: Physics

6 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Not entirely sure what you’re asking.

A perfectly straight road that hugs the earth at the exact same elevation would be curved, yes. That’s just geometry. If it was actually straight in all dimensions, it would stick out of the earth and into space. So yes, there is a curve.

Going fast doesn’t really change what you see (unless you’re going relativistic speeds), so I’m not sure how that’s relevant? If you were standing still on the road, you’d see the same thing as if you were zooming down it at 1000 miles an hour (though the latter might be blurrier).

But yes, you can absolutely see the curvature of the earth. It’s easier from a higher vantage point (you know, like outer space), but you can prove it even close to ground level.

It might be hard to see on a flat road on the ground, but there are pictures of power line towers that clearly curve down as they approach the horizon. Google Lake Pontchartrain power lines.

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