What does a real world map look like? What does a world map actually look like?

If you look at a world map, you will probably think that North America and Russia are bigger than Africa. However, Africa is actually three times the size of North America and significantly larger than Russia.

This strange distortion has been investigated by a climate data scientist from the UK National Weather Service (Met Office, Met office), who created a two-dimensional map showing what the world really looks like. It turned out that many countries - including Russia, Canada and Greenland - are not as big as we think. The distortion originates from the Mercator projection - a map that is most often found in classes and in textbooks. It was created in 1596 to help sailors navigate the sea.

What is wrong with the Mercator map?

Africa is about 14 times the size of Greenland, and yet they are almost the same size on the map. Brazil is more than 5 times the size of Alaska, but Alaska is bigger than Brazil on the map. The map shows that the Scandinavian countries are larger than India, while in fact India is 3 times the size of all the Scandinavian countries combined. While Europe looks larger than North America on this map, the opposite is actually true. Russia is also not as big as it is depicted - in fact, Africa is larger than Russia.

The biggest problem with making an accurate map is that it is impossible to depict the reality of a spherical world on a flat map, a problem that has plagued cartographers for centuries. As a result, the shapes of the maps of the world, as a rule, were varied - from hearts to cones. But the variety gradually disappeared with the advent of one model proposed by Gerardus Mercator in 1596. The Mercator projection shows the correct shapes of land plots, but at the cost of distorting their size in favor of land in the north.

Gerard Mercator(March 5, 1512 - December 2, 1594) was a Flemish cartographer, famous for creating a map of the world based on a projection showing sailing routes in straight lines. Although this is what he is best known for, Mercator was more than just a geographer. He also studied theology, philosophy, history, mathematics and magnetism. Mercator was also an engraver and calligrapher, and even made globes and scientific instruments. Unlike other geographers of the time, he traveled little. Instead, his knowledge of geography was based on his library of over a thousand books and maps. In the 1580s, he began publishing his atlas, which he named after the giant in Greek mythology who holds the world on his shoulders. He suffered a series of strokes in the early 1590s that left him partially paralyzed and nearly blind. The last stroke caused his death in 1594 at the age of 82.

Neil Kay, climate data scientist at Met office, has created an accurate map of the world that shows countries in the Northern Hemisphere are much smaller than people usually think. To do this, he entered data on the size of each country in ggplot, which is a visualization data package for statistical programming. He then created a map using the projection stereographic. This is a mapping function that projects a sphere onto a plane. After that, Kay performed a manual adjustment, adjusting the size of the countries that are closer to the poles. Thus, according to Kay, it is not possible to put all shapes back on the sphere after they have already been laid on the plane.

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Have you ever thought about what real sizes of countries different from those shown on maps? In principle, for a Soviet student, such would not be of any interest, since all students knew about them, even with average academic performance.

However, in our time, the data presented in the article may shock some representatives of the new generation of young people.

So, the real sizes of countries and continents differ from what we see on the maps. For example, looking at a map, you might think that Russia is significantly larger than the continent in size. In fact, Africa (≈ 30 million km²) is almost twice the size of Russia (≈ 17 million km²).

Why does it depend? Maybe someone deliberately wants to misinform us? No, friends. It's all about projection.

We offer, which within one minute will demonstrate to you what we wrote about above. Maybe after watching you will understand everything that you did not learn when reading.

If you liked the given scientific facts about the real sizes of countries, share them on social networks and subscribe to any convenient way.

Many people know that the geographical map of the world familiar to us does not correctly reflect the real ratio of the areas of countries, and even more so of seas and oceans. Using the Mercator projection leads to many distortions, when, for example, Greenland looks larger than Australia... A fundamentally new projection proposed by Japanese designers made it possible to build the most accurate map of the world that mankind has ever seen.

How did they do it?

The traditional map of the world is built in the old way, in which the image from the surface of the globe is transferred to a flat map using the Mercator projection. As a result, we get on the map Greenland several times larger than Australia, while in fact Greenland is three times smaller ...

But a map built according to the principles of the AuthaGraph projection can be called truly innovative! Here, the proportions of land and water remain unchanged and correspond to what we see on the globe. AuthaGraph received the prestigious Japanese Good Design Award for this development.

Then comes the original process of transferring the image to the plane by combining various methods of projection through intermediate objects. This "layered display" reduces the number of errors and monstrous distortions that occur when the surface of the globe is traditionally unfolded into a flat map.

Of course, it is impossible to achieve complete perfection, but the map from AuthaGraph is as close as possible to it.

How do the authors of the new world map explain the need for its appearance?
"Antarctica was discovered in 1820, and the first person reached the North Pole in 1909. In the 20th century, relations between East and West and North-South problems came to the fore in world politics. The main territorial interest was the land, which was the habitat of man. But since the end of the 20th century, dwindling resources and environmental problems have forced attention to the polar regions and the territory of the oceans...
The AuthaGraphic world map seeks to support this new perspective and show how our globe actually looks and how the interests of various countries and groups are distributed on it."

According to its creators, the new map of the world will allow you to look at the planet and its individual corners from a new angle and get rid of ingrained stereotypes like "Western world", "Far East", "go north".

For comparison: a world map drawn in 1844

1490s world map used by Columbus to persuade Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile to support his expedition.

The world map that we have been accustomed to since childhood and which we use almost daily in Google Maps is not quite correct. Russia on it is gigantic; Greenland is larger than South America; the equator is not located in the middle, and the continents are elongated at the poles. This is a conformal Mercator projection.

The projection was invented in the Middle Ages by Gerard Mercator (1512-1594), a Belgian geographer and cartographer, to represent the round Earth on a two-dimensional plane for the needs of navigation. It preserves the angles between directions (whatever that means), but distorts the size of the continents.

After 500 years, two smart guys made the map interactive, opening people's eyes to the real amazing world. It turned out to be a cooler toy than Pockemon Go, where you can rearrange countries in places and compare. The author of the article left to play at 12, returned only at five in the evening ...

While Hillary Clinton accuses Russian hackers of hacking the mail of the US Democratic Party, let's compare Russia and America. Russia more.

But only one and a half times ...

Two Europes and two Australias, South America, Africa and Asia almost entirely could fit on the territory of Russia… Why does Russia look smaller when “moving”? This is the Mercator projection. By moving countries, you can compare them, but we must not forget that this is just a game of the imagination. In other words, Russia would be of this size if it were in the place of Africa, Australia, and so on ...

Australia looks tiny on the map - somewhere on the outskirts of the world. But it is the size of America.

More than Europe and only slightly inferior to China.

USA, Australia and India are placed in Africa. By the way, on the interactive map you can not only move countries, but also rotate them 360 degrees. Very comfortably.

What is Greenland? I used to think that this is a huge icy continent, which for some reason is called an island.

Approximately from the European part of Russia ...

But this is the real Greenland! In terms of area - like the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the Mercator projection, the land area stretches at the North and South Poles and, conversely, narrows slightly at the equator.

By the way, about the poles. Antarctica doesn't even fit on the map. It is impossible to depict the poles on it - it is flat.

But what happens if you put it in the Atlantic Ocean? We found Atlantis!

Let's move it to Russia and Antarctica again leaves the edges, stretching to infinity. This is how the Ice Continent would look like in the place of the Russian Federation.

The largest countries in Africa...

Imagine Africa is trying to take over the world. It looks like M&M's peas scattered on the table.

America is taking over the world...

Russia... I just moved them to the North Pole area.

Put the US in the Mediterranean and you get the Roman Empire. This is how she used to be. Another interesting nuance: American cities in terms of climate will exactly coincide with European ones. After all, the weather in Chicago is about the same as in Bulgaria, Florida is similar to Egypt, and California is easy to confuse with Spain ...

On the contrary: six large European countries (Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Romania) in the United States. Conclusion: Europe can move entirely to America. And there will still be room.

Another former empire is the British. A small island country managed to leave a legacy around the world.

I read somewhere that 78 Italy will fit on the territory of Russia. I checked: 23 fit. But this is because Italy has become larger.

Japan is shaped like Baikal.

There are only four places in the world where you can admire geysers: Iceland, Kamchatka, New Zealand and Yellowstone National Park in the USA. Here's what happens if you put Iceland in each of them... It's tiny.

"Moscow region" in Spain.

The tiny island could be lost somewhere in the Mediterranean. And no one would notice.

Or in the Gulf of Mexico...

Madagascar fits perfectly in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

And Jamaica - in White ... But they would not like it.

Have you heard about New Caledonia?

Nothing surprising...

Finally, the ten largest countries on the equator - this is the best way to compare their sizes. Russia, Canada, China, USA, Brazil, Australia, India, Argentina, Kazakhstan, Algeria. What is Algeria doing in the top ten? And so I was surprised...