Every Map You’ve Ever Seen is Radically Inaccurate

You know that moment when you get mind-f***ed so hard you just casually lean back in your chair, your eyes glaze over, and you mouth-breathe deeply? I do.

So, one fine afternoon, I’m cruising Google Maps — as one does — trying to scope out French Polynesia, not realizing it’s on the opposite side of the globe from France. My coworker Jon strolls by and makes an off-hand comment about his disappointment in the prevalence of the Mercator projection. Now, normally I would chuckle and nod, patiently wait until Jon was out of sight, and then frantically Google what the hell the Mercator projection is, but for some reason I chose instead to do a Aeron 180° and put Jon on blast.

Me: “Jon, what the hell is the Mercator projection?”

Jon: “You never learned about the Mercator projection?”

Me: ☹

Jon: “Buckle up.”

This is Gerard Mercator himself. Not only is he responsible for misinforming millions of kids that Greenland is mad huge, but he’s got some bugged-out eyes.

Over the next couple minutes, Jon dropped a barrage of knowledge bombs. Apparently it’s basically impossible to accurately represent a globe in 2 dimensions, but a 16th century cartographer named Gerard Mercator took a stab at it and created the map that we all know today. His map became the canonical one because it was useful for nautical navigation and sailing was a big deal in the 16th century. Fast forward 500+ years and we’re still using the same map.

The Mercator projection preserves the shapes and curves of countries, but it radically blows out the proportions of countries further from the equator. The further from the equator a country is, the more disproporationate it is. Greenland is a prime example of a country that gets blown way up.

Yes, Greenland is actually less than 30% of the size you learned it was

Why hasn’t someone created a better map projection that perfectly represents the globe? Because it’s impossible. Why hasn’t someone tried to create a different one to at least provide options: They have. Why don’t we know about any of these? Cause not everyone works with this good looking dude.

To really understand how crazy the Mercator Projection is, play with the interactive Google Maps Mercator Puzzle. It wasn’t until I played with this that I understood how inaccurate the map we all use is.