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.

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!

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.

In other news: Trump doesn't want Greenland anymore...

This is true proportional/scaled size. I'm sure Russia is bigger than an inch wide as it's displayed on my screen

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.

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

Watch out, UN. My idiot president is gonna get mad.

All world maps are inaccurate except a globe. Equal Earth still shows distortions when you move closer to the poles. Instead of stretching along the latitude it now compresses along the longitude

Would be nice to see Antarctica

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wc:File:Globo terraqueo 3.gif

I'm kinda surprised there weren't tons of countries against this. For its faults in representing size the Mercator projection is great at representing direction (that's what it was intended for after all). For Japan, New Zealand, and even Austrailia this places North at really awkward angles, making what are in reality straight lines appear curved. If anything, this is even more euro centric than the Mercator projection due to the amount of straight line distortion applied being longitude dependent, centered around Europe. I'd also expect Russia to be against it since it makes them look smaller, even if they don't have the same distortion problem as countries directly opposite Western Europe.

I'm sure that was high on the list of demands for African counties, kept in a debt trap and exploited.

I was already aware how big Africa really is. I'm actually more surprised that Greenland is smaller.

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.

Hahaha, Russia 🤏

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.