Many things in life aren’t very intuitive and just don’t make sense when you first look at them.

For most people, this is the case when comparing a flat map to certain things in the real world or even on a physical globe.

People on the Internet are experiencing this first hand due to a post on X from the “Latest in Space” account. The post simply said:

“Fun Fact: Without touching a single piece of land, it’s possible to sail from India to the USA in a completely straight line.”

This was accompanied by an image with a map and a very curved line, which is where the confusion came in.

The confusion comes from the fact that the image posted, and the maps that almost everyone is familiar with, are based on the Mercator Projection.

The projection has been used to make maps since cartographer Gerardus Mercator came up with it in 1569.

It is made when you place a globe into a cylinder, then you take each point of a map and project it to the corresponding point on the cylinder.

The points are based off of Meridians, which are the (imaginary) lines going from the North to the South Poles.

This type of map is very popular because it works well for navigation. It allows sailors (or pilots) to be able to travel from place to place without having to make constant course corrections.

The problem, of course, is that the Earth is a globe and not flat (despite what some people would have you believe).

In order to take the globe and put it on a flat surface, some distortions are made. As the map gets further from the equator, it becomes more distorted.

Of course, the maps are still very useful for many things, which is why they are so popular.

In posts like this one, however, they can also be used to confuse the average population, and that is just what it did.

The post from Latest in Space caused quite a stir with people arguing that it was not, in fact, possible to travel from the USA to India in a straight line.

Fortunately, user @CosmicAsad helped to illustrate how it is indeed possible, by providing the following animation.

For anyone wondering how: pic.twitter.com/6APPqim4ZR

— Asad 🐱 (@CosmicAsad) May 30, 2024

Not surprisingly, some people will still claim that it is impossible, rather than to admit they were wrong.

Sometimes you can’t trust what you are seeing.

If you think that’s impressive, check out this story about a “goldmine” of lithium that was found in the U.S. that could completely change the EV battery game.