271–280 of 324 posts
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Why would the world feel the need to compromise when all UN countries, except for one agree on the projection. The solution is simply to ignore the minority, especially if it has a government that itself has always refused to compromise with others.
When are all these countries planning to switch over to the new map?
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I agree cartography has always been challenging itself, it is possible the size of most nations have been miscalculated.
> it is possible the size of most nations have been miscalculated Huh? Are you a Flat Earth believer? We can literally see the countries from space. The problem wasn't that we don't know how big they are but that, as your parent explains, it is not possible to have a flat map which accurately depicts a (roughly) spherical terrain. A flat map has to be "wrong" in some sense and this change picks a map which made a tra…
Louis XIV famously said "You have cost me more territory than all my enemies" when he received a more accurate map of France in 1682 (the Cassini map), showing its size was ~20% smaller than previously calculated.
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No, the Mercator map has been the world map you'd see everywhere by default, and it is not that useful except for sailing, which most of us are not doing This is a correction to that.
What are the practical uses of a world scale map beyond sailing? I mean they could be neat for visualizing some useful route calculated as vectors and further used as vectors, but it would still be of mostly an aesthetic value, appealing to the viewers emotions, which could be achieved just as well with some palm oil and sugar.
Wow, is this even a genuine question?
I can use a world scale map to illustrate or explain some geographic point I make in a presentation. I can use it as a quick reminder of the geography related to some current news, etc.
If the mariners want to continue using Mercator, who's stopping them?
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It is insane how the big mistake lasted. After seeing each country before and after side by side on a website, it's insane how big the difference in false sizes of countries compared. Like Greenland vs Africa, come on man!! This must be a joke (and still lasted 457 years).
Do you even why the Mercator projection is still being used? And no, it's not a mistake.
Just open Google Maps and see.
It's not fair to make a false map a standard being used for everything.
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It is insane how the big mistake lasted. After seeing each country before and after side by side on a website, it's insane how big the difference in false sizes of countries compared. Like Greenland vs Africa, come on man!! This must be a joke (and still lasted 457 years).
I thought everyone learned the Mercator use case in school? It is for marine navigation. A line of constant bearing will always appear straight on it. If you want to see the relative size of continents that's a different use case and you need a different projection.
Why?
Because it is not used just for marine navigation. It is mostly used for everything related to maps and apps with maps.
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Do you even why the Mercator projection is still being used? And no, it's not a mistake.
How it is not a mistake? Because as you see, old map is everywhere and is used for everything. Just open Google Maps and see. It's not fair to make a false map a standard being used for everything.
As the article says, all protections have some distortions and it's just a matter of which ones you chose. It's totally reasonable and rational for the African association of cartographer to push for this change - it makes their continent look bigger. At the margin, their children can look at the map and feel more significant. On the flip side, this particular map makes Europe look smaller. So it means that at the ma…
Yes mercator distorts size at high latitudes. But it preserves angles which is more important for many (most?) mapping applications. Literally no one is using a mercator projection to determine size at the continental scale. We use mercator for navigation and for local maps. It keeps everything at right angles. Roads that run N-S look like vertical lines. If something is to the lower-left, that's south-west. These ch…
Nautical charts use Mercator projection, but aviation charts typically use the Lambert conformal conic projection (LCC).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambert_conformal_conic_projec...
To quote the article: "Pilots use aeronautical charts based on LCC because a straight line ... approximates a great-circle route between endpoints for typical flight distances"
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Do you even why the Mercator projection is still being used? And no, it's not a mistake.
How it is not a mistake? Because as you see, old map is everywhere and is used for everything. Just open Google Maps and see. It's not fair to make a false map a standard being used for everything.
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For a while, France had its own prime meridian with 0 degrees passing of course through Paris: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_meridian
It still does. I have one going through my house too. The problem is nobody else knows or cares about those meridians. It's quite fortunate the US didn't invent its own, what with its zeal for being different. We're quite lucky to still have just the one.