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109

UN to vote on adopting new world map that shows Africa’s true scale (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by DamnianWayne@lemmy.world to c/world@quokk.au

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/04/un-vote-world-map-mercator-equal-earth-africa

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[–] GrabtharsHammer@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago

Not just many. Literally all flat maps of the Earth try to flatten a globe onto a 2d surface. That is the task of making a flat map representing the Earth.

Every projection from a 3d globe to a flat 2d representation will introduce distortion of some kind. You can get accurate directions, or accurate land areas, or a nice rectangular coordinate grid for latitude and longitude, but you can't get them all at once.