um, okay but this specific distortion is unhelpful to me. it just shows the extent of the distortion, not what the new map would be. the new map is the most pertinent piece of info.
I’m going with the Gall–Peters Projection: https://youtu.be/vVX-PrBRtTY
This is true proportional/scaled size. I’m sure Russia is bigger than an inch wide as it’s displayed on my screen
pff. that’s tankie revisionist current eventstory
I’m sure Russia is bigger than an inch wide
That’s just what the US Military Industrial Complex want you to believe!
Every few years this comes up again, and every time some nonsense about colonialism or whatever is brought up.
There is no “true” size or “true” shape on a 2D projection of Earth’s very 3D surface. We used the one projection for so long because of how coastal shapes don’t get bent way out of proportion, but like with any projection, messes with the other aspects.
Rather than making spicy click bait titles every so often about the “true” projection of the Earth, how about we teach kids at school what it takes to project something 3D on a 2D surface?
And just use a fucking globe!
Isn’t this incorrect though? As far as I am aware it is possible to represent true size (equal-area) or true shape (conformal), but not both at the same time
I don’t really understand the difference, but Greenland is not bigger than Australia right?
wait. is yo mamma fatter in greenland or NZ? what if we remove NZ from the map?
No
Think of opening the earth up onto a cylinder and stretching it out and over its surface, then flattening that cylinder out.
It will be equal in the centre, but distorted at the ends.
The projection we use is the Reverse Mercator, as its ‘cylinder’ sits vertical so to speak, distorting the poles. Horizontally, it would distort across the Equator in a couple places, which wouldn’t be useable.
As a neurodivergent map person, I’m over-aware of the difficulties of map projection. And I agree that simply calling this new projection ‘accurate’ is misleading
But at the same time, the use of the Mercator as the standard default map in situations that have nothing to do with ocean navigation for literally hundreds of years is absolutely a reflection of the relative power of the Global North, and can’t be dismissed as ‘nonsense about colonialism’
You know it’s the Reverse Mercator right?
It’s been the best way to transform a curved surface to a plane surface in a way that people understand.
Exactly. It’s easy to brush off the idea of soft power but it has real consequences.
The Mercator projection really seems to be Africa-centric if anything
In what way? It inflates the size of areas as they get further away from the equator, resulting in Africa being portrayed as relatively much smaller than it is compared to Europe and North America
it’s in the center?
so coming from you pleasr tell us what would be the best way to project an as accurate as possible world map? I mena both in 3D version and as a 2D version
Pick one that suits your application.
If you’re not using it to engage in navigation, Equal Earth is a sensible default.
Tools like Google maps are a bit thornier. They’re used for navigation, but generally not in a way where angles matter. I could see someone getting themselves into trouble because the angles are screwy. But then again if Google cared about that sort of case, we wouldn’t have the recent story of the Gemini hikers.
yeah, i tried to figure out the angle between two points off google maps the other day. it fucking sucked. i ended up using another website that was basically a frontend for doing it.
i’m still not sure if it was right. if i go orienteering again, i’m bringing paper maps. precharted routes and angles drawn in so i don’t have to look anything up out in the field. orienteering off your phone is stupid.
A 3D version would be a globe. A 2D version is inherently inaccurate because it’s 2D and the earth is not. You are free to pick your poison in the manner of your projection but you will always loose something.
It is complete nonsense. Use makes something standard, and maps have most been used in navigation. So it naturally becomes the default.
This is how ALL defaults become defaults, even when they’re wrong.
What better alternative projection they could use at the time for navigation?
I don’t know? That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the UN using it not for navigation in 2026
You might note that the present is, in fact, not 500 years ago.
Is that the answer to my question?
If you’re asking me to tell you the best way to navigate 500 years ago, I can’t help you because I’m not a historian. The point is that really has absolutely no bearing on how we should use maps today in the present.
And the present doesn’t affect the past.
from the perspective of an art conservationist i’m not entirely sure i agree.
For political uses new projection is better. UN body are not going to use that to navigate.
Hahaha, Russia 🤏
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I’m so sick of this shit. You want an accurate map? Buy a globe. There is no accurate flat map projections. All are wrong. Different projections have different flaws and serve different purposes.
Yes, you’re very clever.
I think the world needs a revolution in consciousness.
Maps are especially used in education, i see it very hard to include a globe with every book and set up a big ass globe in every classroom but whatever
i remember during the breakup of yugoslavia our history teachers, who thought it important that we not only were familiar with but had memorized the capitals, names and locations of all the countries in the world and states in the us (literally that’s all we did one year for history. memorize locations and names and blah blah. that damn animaniacs song was a godsend to anyone who had a vcr). so they were bitching and moaning that they were having to buy new map rolls what seemed like every year because another country was declaring independence.
i was too young to tell whether he was being sardonic, like “they had to fight for independence and all i gotta do is get a new map pack woe is me” or if he was really complaining. but they have the good projectors now. should be a lot easier.
Lol, good luck “accurately” mapping our irregular oblate spheroid on to a globe (i.e. a regular sphere). You’re correct that map projections inherently make concessions and introduce inaccuracies. But a globe would just require a different kind of projection in this context. And that projection hides more subtle inaccuracies. Gloves are not an answer to the problem of map projection distortion.
I cannot disagree with that last sentence…
Also, unless you’re using a paper map, you should never have to see a flat map projection.
We all carry around supercomputers in our pockets that can easily do the math to render a globe. If we want to use a bigger screen, they have even more powerful processors.
Does anybody actually use paper maps at all anymore? I guess sometimes people mount them on the wall and point at them, but I mean using a map to calculate distance, find a path, etc.
What’s ridiculous is that even though computers should be rendering the world as a globe, some websites (even Google Maps) still sometimes use Mercator. It’s especially ridiculous when it’s something like a flight-tracking website where the flight is going in a straight line on the globe, but is rendered as a curved path on a stupid map projection.
Does anybody actually use paper maps at all anymore
if i’m going hiking, yes. i don’t trust the phone to maintain a connection in the wild.
I mean the good thing about a flat projection is that you can see everything at once. When you’re comparing data points of different countries it is nice to see them on a flat map. Neither the actual size nor the angles really matter in that case.
When you’re comparing data points of different countries
Why would you need a map for that? That seems like something where a table is more useful.
Waterman butterfly looks very striking though, woulf make an awesome background on a UN logo
Really? You know the Waterman? Have you seen the 1909 Cahill map it’s based…
The title falsly implies that mercator is “incorrect”. Mercator is an angle preserving projection, meaning all angles are true to real life. The “equal earth” map is an area preserving projection, meaning it retains the true area of countries, but in return the angles are all wrong. This makes equal earth unsuitable for navigation for example.
It is also false to imply that this is some kind of new development. This was very much known all along, mercator simply became the default because world maps used to be primarily for navigation.
Traditional navigation is so cool, I had to learn the basics of it a few years ago as part of a course I was on. I suspect it’ll feel rather less ceremonial in the future if GPS jamming and spoofing continue to become more common.
The title is incomplete, but then again the title is already pretty big without being “The UN has backed replacing the 500-year-old Mercator projection with maps that conform to the actual surface areas of the continents, including the Equal Earth cartographic projection, were appropriate”
how is Canada smaller than the USA in this “equal earth” map when it’s supposed to display true areas? or is the pic in this post just shitty?
Canada (without the various arctic islands) is considerably smaller than the contiguous (sans Alaska and Hawaii) US.
Mercator projection is Canada’s pushup bra.
It’s bigger even if you include Alaska (and Hawaii, but you can ignore Hawaii because it’s small).
We’re repeatedly told in school and all throughout our media that Canada is the “second largest land mass in the world”. Is that not true?
Canada is the second largest country in the world by area.
Land mass or country? Because the Americas make us the second largest land mass with Eurasia and Africa because the largest.
Isn’t Africa connected to Eurasia? So we have the Americas and AfroEurasia plus some islands. Which is why “continents” has no meaning and is another social construct unless you divide them in a way that makes zero sense to anyone who isn’t a geologist.
We should divide the continents in:
Continents: the actual land, so we have the Americas (i’d count them as one as they are almost one), AfroEuroAsia
Sub continents: their definition is cultural so we have north and south america, Africa, Europe, Asia and Oceania
Don’t take anything too seriously, i thought about this on two feets around 2 years ago and forgot about that until now
I know at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter, but it always rubbed me the wrong way when Europeans claim that The Americas are one continent because it’s one connected landmass, but somehow Europe is it’s own continent. North/South America at least came from different super continents and only recently collided. Europe (minus the Balkans) and Asia (minus Arabian and Indian peninsulas) have been together since at least Pangaea.
Which is exactly why I said Eurasia AND Africa. I also never said continent. I said LND MASS which is what was previously said.
Work on your reading comprehension.
Because Canada is ~10% smaller than the US.
And that, folks, is why map projections matter, and this update is loooooong overdue.
Smaller in area?
According to wikipedia, these are the total areas of both countries:
USA: 9,833,520 km2 Canada: 9,984,670 km2
I am certain I am just misunderstanding the system behind this new projection but reading it is supposed to display accurate area, it seems Canada should show up bigger.
You have to look at the land area.
And lakes and rivers those count too
Canada is slightly larger than the US in total area. The US is a tiny bit larger when you just count land-area.
Well yes, Canada is larger if you count the ocean as part of Canada lmao
You say that but do you count Hudson Bay?
Per population density, Canada is a 50 mile stripe along the US border.
Canada total area: 9,984,670 km^2
USA total area: 9,866,624 km^2
Have a look a the respective 2nd digits of those numbers and consider that 9 is indeed bigger than 8.
Source: Wikipedia.
Total land area: 9,093,507
You are counting ocean as part of Canada, a thing not represented on maps.
Imagine being this condescending and wrong.
Imagine being this condescending and wrong
You’re the one doing it
No oceans were counted. But the total area does includes lakes and rivers.
And I already said earlier that the US slightly larger when you just look at land area. It’s no where near 10% though.
They look about the same size to me and they should be about the same size. So that checks out.
Would be nice to see Antarctica
Pfft, you believe in Antarctica? Sure, a wHoLE ConTiNenT cOVeEreD in IcE.
Covered in ice for now.
Don’t worry. We’re well on schedule to fix that.
I feel like showing true sizes is the only thing this does better. I wouldn’t want to study a world map where many countries are almost impossible to even see due to how small and skewed they are displayed as.
I think, you just have to buy a bigger map for that. With Mercator, it’s Africa’s countries that get squished down.
With Mercator, it’s Africa’s countries that get squished down.
But they remain perfectly visible due to how massive they’re to begin with. I don’t really see what the actual issue is.
So, what you’re saying is that you don’t care about the Gambia? 🥲
Part of me wanted to write something like Cambodia and see if you notice.
But more serious answer:
Personally, I fucking hate that I’ve been told incorrect information since young age. I wish every Mercator map had a warning like some countries have in their side mirrors.I also hate that it reinforces racist biases. But well, evidently you know the truth. And I do get being more interested in the countries in your region. Everyone is.
So, TL;DR: Fair enough. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Everyone else: uses a globe
This is a good and long coming change.
Reminder that the red depiction is also “wrong”, and not the equal area projection. The equal area projection map looks like this:
(Can’t upload pictures on blahaj piefed, HTTP 400 error)
In some senses, the red area is more wrong than the Mercator, since it is not a projection at all, but a false projection. The distances between the countries are misleading, especially when superimposed on the Mercator, which is also misleading in terms of sizes, but not shape.
All projections are compromises, but false projections are completely untethered from a mathematical relationship to the actual globe.
It is OK and not misleading if it were made clear that the red area is NOT a map, but a way of depicting the size only. Since it is shown in a geographic context with no disclaimer, i don’t think this is universally apparent.
Here is a link to a 3D globe: https://tembrica.com/en/earth-globe
Here is a good comparator of Mercator size vs equal size countries, not superimposed on a map. https://www.runcell.dev/tool/true-size-map/equal-earth-projection
Equal Earth
Areaprojection:
It’s great for countries in the middle, I.e Europe. Everyone else gets warped and slanted to the side.
Gonna have to rename ourselves to Australia.
There are many equal area world map projections, this one is called Equal Earth. It’s a very solid choice too. Although the very top and bottom of this map are still stretched when viewed on a Tissot indicatrix. Still way better than the shitty Mercator.
Thanks for the correction! Fixed
Why is the Mercator shitty? It has its purpose and it’s good in it.
@[email protected] update your post with the correct image.
Oh that’s clever, I was concerned about the longitude lines, but this is quite readable.
I just don’t like the one with missing slivers in the oceans.
Big Block of Cheese Day finally became prophecy! 😭
I shall gather my team and walk fast through the halls in remembrance of a wonderful show that was almost entirely based on wishful thinking.
And witty banter!
I was already aware how big Africa really is. I’m actually more surprised that Greenland is smaller.
I swear they did this so Trump doesn’t get grand ideas of expanding hugely.
Here’s to hoping it makes Canada less of a target as well.
