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

Question

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

Answer 1

the earth’s curvature is so gradual over large distances that even if you’re zipping across the continent at unimaginable speeds, the highway would still look straight to you. The curvature becomes more apparent when you’re looking at much larger scales, like from space