The most accurate map of the Earth was made by a team of physicists. And it has little to do with what we are used to.

JVTech News The most accurate map of the Earth was made by a team of physicists. And it has little to do with what we are used to.

Creating a map is not an easy task

A major challenge for cartographers attempting to map the world is the impossibility of recreating the surface of a sphere on a plane. At least in a faithful, precise and readable way. The planispheres that we live around all the time, for example, do not perfectly represent the different regions of the world, either in terms of scale or arrangement.. However, the latest effort to create a map that minimizes the distortions associated with representing the surface of a sphere on a map yields a strange result: a map that the authors compare to a vinyl record. indeed, On this map, our planet is represented by two circles, one representing the northern hemisphere and the other the southern hemisphere.

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The map has imperfections, but its authors believe it is the most accurate projection ever made. “You can’t make everything perfect”Richard Gott said, one of the authors, A Press announcement, “A map is as good for one thing as it can be for others.”.

In search of perfection

Humanity has known for thousands of years that the Earth is round (no offense to flatists), but this has never caused a problem for two reasons. The first is that the map only includes the area of ​​Eurasia and AfricaBefore the early 20th century, maps did not include the Americas, Oceania, or Antarctica. Another is that maps don’t have to be super-accurateBecause cartographic accuracy did not become important until modern times, especially for seafarers.

J. Map by Richard Gott, Robert VanderBei and David Goldberg

is the Mercator projection One of the oldest And still the most widely used. This launch was built in the 16th century by Gerardus Mercator with the aim of facilitating transoceanic navigation.. Although this map maintains the accuracy of the shapes of features such as oceans or countries, the measurements are significantly distorted, with areas near the poles being larger than the equator. The maps have become less distorted as a result of centuries of work. Among them, the authors of this new map highlight the Winckel-Triple, a projection created in 1921 by the German cartographer Oswald Winckel. This map is not as useful to navigators and still presents distortions around the poles, but it represents a compromise.

A perfect card?

In 2007, David Goldberg and Richard Gott created a map rating system based on six criteria: local shapes, areas, distances, curvature, asymmetry, and slices. Additionally, the scoring system is reversed: A spherical world map will score 0.0, and any additional distortion will then add up to a higher score. A rating system was introduced here. Since this is the work of a single team, it is not surprising that this card is able to reduce the score. If the Winkel-Triple score was 4,563, the new map reduces the error to 4,497 points..

The new projection outperforms its alternatives on all six variables determined by Richard Gott and his team, but there is one that stands out thanks to one trick in particular: continuity. If we take any map, we will see that there is a break, which is usually located in the Pacific Ocean, between Asia and Oceania and America.. This is a major source of distortion by group norms. Their solution: a double-sided disc. Got’s map is designed to represent a disc, which gives it continuity “cut” which is found on the equator (and which, according to the authors of the map, may also be located along the zero meridian).