It’s easy to mock the people who believe the Earth is flat. It’s harder to accept how one's own world view is largely based on a flat representation of the planet.

Most flat maps, by their very nature, grossly misrepresent the size of countries and contribute to confusion.

axbom.com/world-map/

The world map that reboots your brain

The flat, visual portrayal of the world in two dimensions based on the Mercator projection has been so commonplace in ‘Western' classrooms that this map is widely embedded in collective consciousness as a plausible truth.

In my experience too few are taught to question it.

In your head you may use this map to think about distances between countries, and the shapes and sizes of countries and continents. Greenland and Africa, for example, look to be essentially the same size.

In reality of course Africa is about 14 times larger than Greenland.

What is happening in the Mercator projection is that the further something is from the equator, the bigger it appears, because it is necessarily stretched out horizontally.

A world map based on the Mercator projection is constructed as if the world was a cylinder rather than a globe.

There is another non-intuitive effect of flattening the globe in this way. It's about how the curvature of the Earth is misrepresented.

When drawing straight lines between countries they would in reality be curved and seemingly curved lines can in fact be mostly straight.

What is this line?

This line represents the longest distance you can sail across the world in a straight line without hitting land. It represents a distance of 32,000 kilometres.

And yes, you read that right: this is a straight line (or, you know, a straight-direction line).

When people refuse to believe me, I show this video with a 3D representation of the globe using Google Earth. Here it becomes evident that the line is in fact straight (along the curvature of the Earth).

🎥 Watch video on Bluesky

As a further example of the skewed perspective provided by the Mercator projection, in this video I’m using the service thetruesize.com to show how Kenya, a country on the equator, would appear if it was further north or south on the map.

🎥 Watch video on Bluesky

Another favorite example of mine is Sweden compared to Madagascar. On a world map based on the Mercator projection Sweden appears to be at least twice the size of Madagascar. In reality, Madagascar is 30% larger than Sweden.

🎥 Watch video on Bluesky

There are of course many different flat projections other than Mercator. Before I reveal them all, have a look at the Authagraph projection, invented in 1999 by Japanese architect Hajime Narukawa, earning him the Good Design Award in 2016.

Authagraph does a much better job at preserving the relative size and area of land and water masses, while reducing shape distortion. It is also designed to avoid dead ends, allowing the spherical nature of the world to be visualised by simply expanding the map in any direction.

You can choose, and are encouraged to, center the Authagraph map on any part of the world to ensure that your perspective is relevant to what you are trying to learn. Here, centered on Europe. Do you recognize your part of the world? Any aha moments?

So what did I learn from looking at maps and how they distort our understanding of the planet? I of course shared some insights in my comprehensive blog post.

axbom.com/world-map/

You can dive in there, or if you want more mind-boggling examples, I’m here for you.

The world map that reboots your brain

You may have seen this image before. It stirred up quite a controversy on the bird site, involving Twitter Community Notes and the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Rest assured, the image is confirmed to be valid, and the numbers for Russia’s size in Britannica are wrong (the full story in my blog post).

As you will have understood by now, the size of Africa is repeatedly underestimated. And the Mercator projection (and others) has a lot of responsibility in this misconception.
Kai Krause’s infographic underscores the immensity of the African continent.

Kai Krause makes this point in his graphic:

“In addition to the well-known social issues of illiteracy and innumeracy, there should also be such a concept as 'immapancy', meaning insufficient geographical knowledge."

I mentioned there are many map projections. You can always trust XKCD to have covered important topics like maps. In this cartoon your personality is predicted based on which map projection you prefer.

xkcd.com/977/

Image description: learn.axbom.com/xkcd977/

Now, all of this has of course been a setup for you to truly appreciate this scene from The West Wing.

vimeo.com/653644258/83...

The West Wing – Map Projection Meeting

🔗 Originally posted on Bluesky