Cartographers explain how the Equal Earth projection shows Africa’s true relative size and why the world map we use matters.

Mapping a sphere onto a flat plane is mathematically impossible. But a better world map than the Mercator projection is ...

The U.N. voted to promote map projections that more accurately represent the world, drawing official opposition from the U.S.

See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. Ever since we discovered Earth was round, mapmakers have struggled to ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A world map familiar to generations of students could lose ground under an African-led effort to represent countries and ...

Ever wondered why Greenland looks as big as Africa on the map? It’s because of something called the Mercator projection. Putting a 3-D planet on a two-dimensional world map was challenging for early ...

Maps have a way of distorting our perception of the world. But AuthaGraph is trying to bring us back to reality with a new map that accurately depicts the size of continents in comparison to each ...

The Mercator projection, left, distorts the relative size of landmasses, particularly towards the poles. The Equal Earth ...

Most common world maps are highly size distorted, with any land masses located toward the poles tending to look much bigger than they really are, which, in some ways, makes this weird-looking ...

World maps are the worst. Continents and oceans are distorted to an unrealistic proportion in an attempt to represent a three-dimensional sphere on a two-dimensional plain. Some maps—looking at you, ...