There's the lowest tech way is to stretch a string along a globe or to put a very large rubber band around it to go over three cities, then loop the loop and see where a fourth city may land? The red circles mark the quarter and half points along the string, so Mauritius seems to be the destination... not bad!
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But is there a way to google antipodes an do this sans GIS? Enter WolframAlpha (WA), a search engine that does math as well as text:
- as above, I simply searched "antipodes LA" - try it and select the geometric option - and you land somewhere in the Indian Ocean - set the map window to 5000+ to see where you are - Island of Mauritius lies the closest and that sounded like a fun destination.
- looking up 'great circle' you see that WA does circles too, and with a little tinkering I found this search: "circle London, LA, Wellington, Port Louis Mauritius".
- accept the default syntax it interpreted your query as, and all the stats on distances and travel times are detailed, but this map caught my eye:
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It was fun to stretch a string on a globe, and a search engine on steroids made short shrift of this after tinkering with syntax. The point is: always look for various ways to satisfy your curiosity... A map may be not what you think!
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