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

On September 4, 2026, the United Nations adopted a resolution to promote a new map of the world. The resolution encourages ...

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

The Mercator projection is the map widely used across the globe but inaccurately depicts the sizes of countries and continents The UN has just called for the predominant world map to be replaced with ...

The new map is intended to reduce geographic distortions in educational materials, public communications and data visualizations. The U.N. resolution recommends rather than requires use of the new map ...

A new map projection endorsed by the U.N. aims to represent Africa and other continents at their more accurate relative sizes ...

The map you might have been learning from your whole life may have given you a pretty inaccurate understanding of the relative sizes of Earth's landmasses. On September 4, 2026, the United Nations ...

The United Nations adopted the Equal Earth map showing Africa's true size, but the United States was the sole nation to vote against the resolution.

The process of converting a three-dimensional(3D) spherical globe into a two-dimensional(2D) flat surface creates a problem for the cartographer. A trade-off is required between the accuracy of ...

France will stop using maps based on the traditional Mercator projection, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced on ...

Compare Greenland and South America on a world map.On a Mercator projection map, the large northern island appears wider than ...

For centuries, human understanding of the size, shape and bearing of nations has been laid out by one map based on a single projection of the way the world looks. The Mercator projection was designed ...