Three Scientists Create the Most Accurate World Map in History

Did you know that the world maps we see every day are not accurate? The measurements of countries and the distances between them are distorted on common maps, but now, scientists J. Richard Gott, Robert Vanderbei, and David Goldberg have developed the most precise world map to date.

This map is presented in the form of a two-sided flat disk and radically minimizes the visual distortions found in current maps. Each side displays one half of the globe, either the Eastern and Western Hemispheres or the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, with the equator marking the edge of the disk.

A Two-sided Earth map from Remember to Switch to PU on Vimeo.

Current flat maps usually better represent measurements in areas close to the equator, but the distortion in the polar regions is enormous, causing polar regions to appear cut off. Additionally, the sizes of the continents are totally distorted, for example, Africa is underrepresented in most maps.

Thus, the new map is a revolutionary idea, as it has no cuts, allowing distances to be measured from one side to the other using a string or a measuring tape, even from one side of the disk to the other. Moreover, the group of scientists has also developed maps of other objects in the solar system, as well as maps of the sky.

In 2008, Goldberg and Gott designed a system to score existing world maps based on the distortions that flat maps might present compared to the globe. In this system, the spherical Earth would score a 0, while this new map has a score of 4.497. This represents a slight improvement over the previously most accurate map, the Winkel Tripel, used by National Geographic, which has a score of 4.563.