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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Geographical Center Problem
From: Dan Allen
Date: 2001 Jul 25, 5:59 PM
From: Dan Allen
Date: 2001 Jul 25, 5:59 PM
Neat maps! I don't see how the smallest traveling distance can be 58,000 nautical miles. The farthest you can get on the planet is about 12,000 nautical miles from another spot. Well, we seem to have a basic idea now about where the geographical center is of 20 people, and with a bunch of fooling around I now believe we have a pretty good measure of things. Dan -----Original Message----- From Navigation Mailing List [mailto:NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM]On Behalf Of R.H. van Gent Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2001 3:59 PM To: NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM Subject: Re: Geographical Center Problem Dan Allen wrote: > I have summarized the results so far on a new web page of mine. > > http://www.nwlink.com/~danallen/center.htm > > The center is currently located somewhere in Hudson Bay, which for > some reason doesn't seem right. I am going to keep studying this > interesting geographical problem. When the Hudson Bay is taken as the map centre of an orthogonal view of the Earth, its location does not look so strange as it is indeed roughly centred between the positions in the US and Europe (the few positions elsewhere do not carry enough weight to significantly alter the 'centre of gravity') I have prepared two maps at http://www.phys.uu.nl/~vgent/images/sphere1.gif http://www.phys.uu.nl/~vgent/images/sphere2.gif The 'centre of gravity' is shown on the first map as a blue dot and the 20 red dots on both indicate our positions as listed on Dan Allen's web page. On both maps, my IDL program has also drawn contour lines for the total distance (in units of 1000 nautical miles) that everyone will have to travel (as the proverbial crow flies along a great circle trajectory) to get there. The smallest travelling distance is a little less than 58,000 nautical miles and the largest possible is a little more than 158,000 nautical miles. In out case, the optimum location (as far as travel distance is concerned) is in the Great Lakes Region and close to the position of the 'centre of gravity'. ======================================================== * Robert H. van Gent * Tel/Fax: 00-31-30-2720269 * * Zaagmolenkade 50 * * * 3515 AE Utrecht * E-mail: r.h.vangent@astro.uu.nl * * The Netherlands * * ******************************************************** * Home page: http://www.phys.uu.nl/~vgent/homepage.htm * ========================================================
