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Thread: Longest Meridian Crossing Land?

  1. #1

    Default Longest Meridian Crossing Land?

    On http://users.belgacom.net/gc674645/pyramid/pyramid.htm and on a few other pages, they state that the Great Pyramid is on the longest “land-lines”. They mean that it lies at the intersection of a meridian (half a great circle on the geoid) and latitude parallel that each cross more land than any other meridian and parallel. I suspect this is wrong, and I’d like to investigate those statements.

    Which meridian crosses the most land?
    Which parallel crosses the most land?

    I don't know how to solve these questions, so I posted here.


    ~~ Nehmo

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    Just looking at my globe, the pyramid is very close to the 30th parallel. Eyeballing it, it looks like it does cover the most land with the 40th also being close. Going vertically it also seems to fit the eyeball test. I assume this is how that sort of thing got started - someone looking at a globe and measuring distances with a string. You couldn't use a flat map because the more north or south you go the more the land gets squeezed so the distances on a flat map are deceiving. I don't have any string around (guess I need to get some) but if you have a globe and some string you could measure things out for yourself.
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    Guild Adept moutarde's Avatar
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    Well, using google maps, the pyramids are at (very, very roughly) 30 lat, 30 long. If you take the parallel from the west coast of africa to the east coast of Saudi Arabia, you're going from -10 long to 48 long, so across 58 degrees of longitude. And from North to South, the meridian would go from 31 lat to -30 lat, 61 degrees of latitude. My first guess for an intersection with longer lines would go from the west coast of France, to the east coast of Russia, near the the sea of ohkotsk, which is -4 long to 139 long, or 143 degrees of longitude, which is longer than the two pyramid intersections put together.

    Now, this is assuming that lakes don't count. I don't know if any of those three lines have lakes crossing them, but odds are they do. Rivers obviously don't count, or the Nile would probably mess up the Pyramid lines immediately.

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    Software Dev/Rep Hai-Etlik's Avatar
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    However, when it comes down to it, they are REALLY vague about what they even mean by that statement. There are many different ways to interpret it.

    More importantly, it's completely pointless even if it is true for any interpretation. You could pick just about any point on Earth and be able to find something 'significant' about it if you look long enough and hard enough. Many of the significant points they list don't even make sense anyway.

    If you want to really measure the lengths of those lines though, you can use an equidistant cylindrical map to measure along meridians, and a sinusoidal map to measure along parallels.

  5. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by moutarde View Post
    Well, using google maps, the pyramids are at (very, very roughly) 30 lat, 30 long. If you take the parallel from the west coast of africa to the east coast of Saudi Arabia, you're going from -10 long to 48 long, so across 58 degrees of longitude. And from North to South, the meridian would go from 31 lat to -30 lat, 61 degrees of latitude. My first guess for an intersection with longer lines would go from the west coast of France, to the east coast of Russia, near the the sea of ohkotsk, which is -4 long to 139 long, or 143 degrees of longitude, which is longer than the two pyramid intersections put together.
    47.71" N 31° 7' 57.64" E
    Google Earth allows measurement on lines. I started a thread in that forum:
    http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthread...3&#Post1391653

    6,767 km of land in Africa
    + 3,674 km in Europe including the Black Sea.
    = 10,441 km for the meridian (ignoring Antarctica).

    + 2,364 km in Antarctica to the South Pole

    I need to spend some time on this.

    ~~ Nehmo

  6. #6

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    It's bunk. When I came across this supposed fact, it gave me pause. If indeed it were true, it meant the person who chose the location of the pyramid knew about the geography of the earth. It would be an unlikely coincidence for the pyramid to be on either of these lines. I assume it is there because it is a place near the civilization. Today, Cairo comes almost to the base of the pyramid.
    But in reality the great pyramid does not lie on ether line of most land.
    http://www.catchpenny.org/pyramid.html "If by "meridian" Smyth [someone making the claim] means a half-circle, then the claim's accuracy may still be disputed (it is entirely anecdotal and no mathematical proof has been offered). It appears that a meridian a few degrees to the west (in blue below) would cross more land."
    and
    " Again, this is doubtful. A line of latitude several degrees north (in orange above) traverses more land."

    A number of other myths are explained:
    http://forum.grasscity.com/science-n...-answered.html

    People just like to believe.

    ~~ Nehmo

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    Sort of like the television effect - if you say it on tv then many people believe it to be true because, after all, they wouldn't lie to us would they?
    If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
    -J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)


    My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps

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