Eli5: Why do some flights go so far north before crossing the Pacific Ocean?

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There is a flight going from Dallas Texas to Tokyo but they appear to be going all the way to Alaska before crossing and coming back down.

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Remember, the earth is a sphere (technically it’s an oblate spheroid but that’s not important). If you were to take a pen and draw a line between two distant points on the surface of a globe it would seem like a straight line. However if you take the globe and cut it so you can lay it as flat as possible, you’ll see your straight line turn into a curve. Straight lines drawn on curved surfaces become curves when the surface is flattened out. The inverse is also true. Curves drawn on flat surfaces become straight lines when the surface is bent.

That amongst other things is one of the reasons why it can be interesting to realize the closest state to Japan is Alaska and the closest state to the continent of Africa is actually Maine. So in order to flay a straight line from one to the other your path will look like it’s going on a curve on the flat map.

Though part of that is also due to the fact it is literally impossible to perfectly translate a sphere onto a two dimensional shape. That’s just a simple question of geometry. You’re taking something with infinite surfaces and trying to translate it to something with a finite amount of surfaces. We have to stretch and distort certain dimensions to make that neat rectangular map you’re familiar with.

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