Do you know what has the whole world! What has oceans and rivers and mountains!
And it’s so light that you can lift it!?
The answer is Atlas!
Not the Greek one! The book of maps! Even that may be named after the Greek one but I am not so sure!
Remember how we are so used to see the maps how it is!? Even in one of the levels of this game called Assassin’s Creed, you had to make an Atlas to proceed!
But did you know that all maps lie!?
And all maps are wrong!
Though designed with the best of intentions — to provide a detailed and coherent projection of Earth — flat maps are far from accurate; some areas look far bigger than they really are, others appear much smaller, and distances between various land masses are misrepresented.
Distortions can occur through alterations to scale, symbols, projection, simplification, and choices around the map’s content!
The first map in a two dimension was called the Mercator projection, created by Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569!
It was one of the first attempt to depict the earth on paper! And was a revelation half a millennium ago and remains the most widely used flat depiction of Earth!
This map was favored by navigators for centuries because it enabled them to plot courses in a straight line!
But this depiction creates lots of distortions!
On the globe, meridians converge as they approach a pole, and the lengths of parallels of latitude grow shorter until the pole. But, when mapping the Earth into a rectangle, the poles are stretched from points into lines the length of the equator. Every parallel is stretched to the length of the equator, so on the map, there is horizontal stretching as one moves poleward.
On the globe, parallels are equally spaced, but to get the special property of great circles and straight lines, Mercator’s projection exponentially increases the separation of parallels as one moves poleward. On the map, therefore, there is increasing vertical stretching as one moves poleward!
So the result of this is that some regions look far bigger on the map than they are in reality, while others are drawn much smaller! This size distortion has persisted for ages!
This distortion is usually described in terms of the relative sizes of Greenland, Europe, Africa and India! You can see any standard map and see that Greenland is shown to be so huge!
The fact is that Greenland is actually smaller than Africa and India!
To put this in context, Africa is nearly 14 times larger, according to Scientific American!
That’s the continent! In fact 80 percent of Bharat can take 100 percent of Greenland! Now that’s cutting down the size!
Then you have Europe looks which looks comparable to or larger than South America!
While the fact is that South America is nearly double the size of Europe!
Then you have the vastness which is Antarctica!
Antarctica looks like a massive, infinite continent at the bottom!
Antarctica is actually the fifth-largest continent, smaller than Russia!
Which is why the word and UN has now officially moved on to equal Earth maps!
The Equal Earth map projection is a modern equal-area map projection created in 2018 by cartographers Bojan Šavrič, Bernhard Jenny, and Tom Patterson.
It was specifically designed to solve the polar inflation problems of the Mercator projection while avoiding the highly stretched, unnatural shapes found in older equal-area maps like the Gall-Peters projection.
The projection accurately displays the true relative sizes of all landmasses while maintaining a highly visually pleasing, rounded aesthetic inspired by the popular Robinson projection!
The map has of course cut North America to size to be less than Africa which is the truth! Then again not many like the truth!
Of course some truths remain whether you like them or not! It’s also a likeable truth that
Rakesh Roshan Nagrath is a better director than actor!
All the best for the new map!
Shub ratri!
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