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The World Looks Different
You've probably been looking at the world wrong your entire life.
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Not because the countries are in the wrong places.
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Because they're the wrong size.
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The problem is trying to take a round planet and flatten it onto a rectangle.
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Something has to get distorted.
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One of the most familiar world maps uses the Mercator projection, created in 1569 for navigation.
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It was very useful for sailors because it preserved direction.
But it did something weird to size.
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The farther you move from the equator, the more exaggerated landmasses become.
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That's why Greenland can look almost as large as Africa on a Mercator map.
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In reality?
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Africa is about 14 times larger than Greenland.
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In 2026, the United Nations General Assembly backed a resolution encouraging the use of equal-area map projections when accurately comparing the relative sizes of continents matters.
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One of the projections specifically highlighted is called Equal Earth.
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Equal-area maps sacrifice some other properties in order to preserve relative area.
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So Africa looks like Africa.
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South America gets its proper size.
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Greenland gets considerably less impressive.
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The resolution doesn't eliminate the Mercator map, and it doesn't declare one projection correct for every purpose.
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Because there really isn't a perfect flat map.
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Every time you flatten a globe, something has to give.
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Shape.
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Distance.
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Direction.
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Area.
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The difference is deciding what you're willing to get wrong.
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