It's out! Super clear, this is the Earth's plane map

Scientists take you to see the earth using two "pancakes"?

Here are two pancake images of Earth:

The double-sided pancake map of the Earth is the most accurate flat map ever created (Image credit: J. Richard Gott, Robert Vanderbeg, David Goldberg)

The earth is a sphere, so how can we accurately depict it into a two-dimensional map? Simply put, we can press the earth into two thin pancakes, with the equator as the edge of the pancake, one for the northern hemisphere and the other for the southern hemisphere.

The double-pane map represents the most accurate map of the earth currently available. Unlike other flat maps, the double-pane map does not reduce or magnify ocean and land plates. For example, many two-dimensional maps depict Greenland as the same size as Africa, but in fact it is only 1/14 of the size of Africa (from "Scientists" report). Moreover, unlike other rectangular maps with large areas, this map can be held in your hand at any time. J. Richard Gott, professor emeritus of astrophysics at Princeton and the main scientist of the study, said that this map can be printed on a single magazine one after the other, so that readers can cut it out at any time.

How to make accurate two-dimensional maps has troubled cartographers for centuries. In order to quickly lock down the difficulties faced by flat maps, Gott and David Goldberg, a physics professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia, developed a map scoring system, which was published in the Journal of Surveying and Cartography in 2007. The system scores two-dimensional maps based on six levels of distortion - terrain, territory, distance, curvature (bends and curvature deformation), tilt (asymmetry), and border lines (such as the continuous separation of the Pacific Ocean). The more accurate the map, the lower the score, for example, a well-designed globe gets zero points.

Gott said that a perfect two-dimensional map of the earth is impossible, and features that are prominent in one aspect may be detrimental to another aspect. For example, the world map that people are familiar with comes from the Mercator projection. The Mercator projection is good at displaying terrain, but this will distort the North Pole and the South Pole, which is why these areas cannot be seen on the map.

The Mercator projection was invented by Dutch geographer Gerard Mercator in 1569 to help navigators navigate the world. Note that the polar regions are distorted and Hawaii is much larger than it actually is. (Image credit: QAI Publishing/Getty Images)

The best planimetric map projection, according to the team's scoring system, is the Winkel Triple Projection, which originated in 1921 and was developed by German cartographer Oswald Winkel and is used today by the National Geographic Society. This map has a lower distortion score (4.563), but still has the problem of dividing the Pacific Ocean into two parts, one on the right side of the map and the other on the left side, which can give the illusion that Asia and the island of Hawaii are far apart.

The Winkel Triprojection map was first produced in 1921, and we can notice that it distorts Antarctica and tends to give the illusion that Canada is far away. (Photo credit: Photitos 2016 Getty Images)

To address the boundary segmentation problem, scientists have taken a new approach to map making, hoping to design a map with minimal errors that can beat the Winkel triple projection in the six errors mentioned above. The pancake map of the Earth borrows the idea of ​​a polyhedron, or a multi-faceted 3D model - in 1943, architect Richard Buckminster Fuller drew a rough outline of the map and explained how to fold it into a multi-faceted globe. Although Fuller did a good job of refining the outlines of the continents, there were many errors in the depiction of the oceans, such as exaggerating the distance between Australia and Antarctica.

Richard Buckminster Fuller holds an assembled polyhedral globe folded from a flat map on the right. (Photo credit: Thomas D. McAvoy/Getty Images)

In a paper published on the arXiv database that has not yet been peer-reviewed, Gott considered "envelope polyhedra," which involve sticking regular shapes back to back, which led to the idea of ​​a two-sided map. The new map, published on arXiv, consists of two maps that can be viewed side by side or back to back. Either way, the map has no border cuts. If you want to measure the distance from one hemisphere to the other, just run a straight line or a tape measure from one map to the other. "If you are an ant, you can just crawl from one side to the other," Gott describes. "Our map is continuous at the equator, and Africa and South America are like clothes on a clothesline, straddling the equator."

The Earth pancake map has a smaller distance error. For example, its configuration means that the distance is exactly 22.2% of the actual distance. In contrast, the Mercator and Winkel triple projections have exaggerated polar distortion and spacing on both sides of the map, respectively. Secondly, the equatorial edge of the Earth pancake map is only 1.57 times larger than the central area. Gott said that he is not aware of other similar two-sided Earth maps. "Our map is the closest flat map to the real Earth at present. Usually to see the entire Earth, you have to rotate it; with our new map, you just need to turn it over." Gott's team has also developed pancake maps of Mars, Jupiter, the Sun and other celestial bodies. If you are interested, you can continue to pay attention.

BY:Laura Geggel

FY:gxm

If there is any infringement of related content, please contact the author to delete it after the work is published.

Please obtain authorization for reprinting, and pay attention to maintaining integrity and indicating the source