“Is the map of the world that we know correct?” Facts you didn't know

Generations of children have grown up learning that a flat, rectangular map of the world is actually what the Earth looks like, but does this map really reflect the shape of our planet?

Although designed to provide a detailed and coherent projection of the Earth, flat maps of the world are far from accurate, with some areas appearing much larger than they actually are, others much smaller, and distances between different land masses being misrepresented.

"Every map of the world is distorted in some ways," Matthew Edney, professor of geography and cartographic history at the University of Southern Maine, told Live Science in an email.
Despite the objections of flat-Earth theorists, our planet is not flat. It is technically a sphere with a flat top and bottom and a bulge along the equator.

This has presented, since the dawn of cartography, a major problem for cartographers: how can a three-dimensional object be represented flawlessly in two dimensions?
And if you have a spare globe, or an old tennis ball, try cutting it out and rearranging it into a perfect rectangle. This impractical challenge will give you a good idea of ​​just how mismatched a sphere and a flat rectangle are.

Created by geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569, the "Mercator projection" was the world's most common cartographic method, and continues to be the most widely used flat drawing of the Earth, according to MapHover. This map has been preferred by navigators for centuries because it enabled them to plot courses in a straight line.

Mercator's view gives the correct shapes of land masses, but with obvious distortions.

"Some projections distort more than others," Edney said. "The Mercator projection is the classic example. The projection is congruent and also has the special property that large circles are straight lines."

A great circle is defined as "any circle drawn on a sphere with a center that includes the center of the globe,"according to ThoughtCo.

Edney added: "This combination of properties produces large spatial distortions. On the globe, longitudes converge as they approach a pole, and the lengths of the latitudes grow toward the pole. However, when mapping the Earth into a rectangle the poles are stretched from points to lines along the equator. , and each parallel runs along the equator, so on the map there is a horizontal extension as one moves toward the pole."

He continued, "On the globe, the parallels are evenly spaced, but to have the special property of large circles and straight lines, Mercator's projection greatly increases the separation of the parallels as one moves toward the pole. So, on the map, there is an increase in vertical expansion as one moves toward the pole. one to the pole.
The result is that some areas appear much larger on the map than they actually are, while others are drawn much smaller.

To put this in context, Greenland and Africa appear to be similar in size in the Mercator projection, when in fact Africa is about 14 times larger, according to Scientific American.
Similarly, Alaska is represented as being three times larger than Mexico, while Mexico is actually 1.3 times larger. This projection has its own accuracy problems. Although all regions are the correct size relative to each other, most land masses are deformed in order to make them so. Land masses appear extended, horizontally at the poles and vertically at the equator, which means that although countries are roughly the right size, they are by no means the case. This distortion, as with the Mercator projection, is most prominent at the poles. Many other flat maps have been drawn over the centuries, but they all have the same problem: it is impossible to depict the Earth in 3D on a 2D map without compromise.

Edney explained that there are alternatives to dropping Mercator, which could be adopted, saying: “One alternative to dropping Mercator that circulated in the 1970s and 1980s is the Gal Peters show, which is equal territory, but very ugly. My academic grandfather, Arthur Robinson, said it made the Continents look like clothes. Long interior hanging on a clothesline.

And in 2021, astrophysicists produced what is believed to be the most accurate flat map of Earth ever, Live Science reported. It consists of two "flat maps" that can be viewed side by side.