It is surprisingly difficult to move any real distance in a straight line. The landscape is littered with obstacles both natural and man-made. It turns out that treating rivers, fences, mountains, ...

Q: Google Maps gives the mileage between places based on driving directions on the available highways, but is there a way to calculate the distance between two towns “as the crow flies”? A: The ...

It's a recurring scene in desert movies - a group of lost people try to find their way through the dunes but end up walking round in circles. Now scientists have shown that the old cliché really is ...