Google Earth Geography 101

Xah Lee, 2006-11-24

The following are some distances in numbers, so that, you get a sense of how far.

• Shanghai↗, China to Buenos Aires↗, Argentina (roughly semi-circumference of Earth↗): 20k km.
• San Francisco↗ to New York↗ (US coast to coast): 4200 km.
• San Francisto to Tokyo↗: 8270 km.
• NY to London↗: 5580 km.
• San Francisto to Shanghai↗: 9880 km.
• Australia↗ side to side: 4000 km.
• San Francisco to Haiwaii↗: 3850 km.
• Haiwaii to Japan↗: 6000 km.
• San Francisco to Los Angeles↗: 545 km.
• England↗ top to bottom: 930 km.
• Taiwan↗ top to bottom: 380 km.

• Cruise missile↗ range: 1000 km. ( AGM-129↗ = 3000 km) .
• ICBM↗ range: up to 10 000 km or more.

If you don't have already, you should get Google Earth↗.

above: Earth from Google Earth.

If i'm stranded on a island and can only have 4 software applications on my computer, that would be: Mathematica↗, Emacs↗, Google Earth, Web browser.

If i'm to do a demonstration to God of earthling's state of technology thru a existing software application, that'd be Google Earth.

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