Princeton astrophysicists re-imagine world map
princeton.edu
princeton.edu
On the other hand, humans care a lot about climate change and this affects the poles a great deal, and maybe a projection that centers the poles like this can help make these regions of the world more visible.
This feature of the map seemed particularly unique:
"To measure distances from one side to the other, you can use string or measuring tape reaching from one side of the disk to the other, he suggested."
I happen to originate from a different country than where I currently reside and on this map, the path that the plane takes makes a whole lot more sense. It seems to be a much better model of the world, to get better, you'd need a 3D globe.
However, I don't want to go too hard on these guys. Reading the arXiv paper, I think it's clear that they wanted to make a cool set of disks for the Solar System. They actually look really cool for Jupiter and Saturn with their equatorial cloud bands and polar vortices! And centering on the poles gives a nice symmetry with the Earth and Mars with the ice caps.
They also show the version of Earth with the projection centered on the Western and Eastern hemispheres and the distortions are a lot more obvious (e.g., Alaska, Canada, and Australia are pretty bad). I can see why they like the North/South pole version.
The choice of having the focus of this map on the poles (the two most uninhabitable places on earth) is interesting. These two points are the least distorted on the map.
Here is an observable that lets you drag around landmasses in different projections [https://observablehq.com/@fil/synchronized-projections]
If you're a tern or an albatross, this seems like a great map. But as a human I can't see myself using this for anything practical.
On the other hand, it's always nice to have new ways to marvel at the pale blue dot we inhabit.
Having it flat on paper can be more useful for classrooms that do not have a globe. And even if they have a globe, it's something that can be photocopied for every student to have. Also, I feel like it's easier for people to internalize the sizes when it's flat on paper vs looking at a globe.
Odd way to characterize a map that cuts the equatorial region literally in half. It is true you can rotate the two circles so that whichever longitude you want is touching though, that's nice. They picked something around 5 degrees east, or just about the middle longitude of the landmass of Africa.
The most unusual feature of this projection is how it heavily emphasizes the two poles, literally centering them. Most maps you don't really get any sense of the Antarctic continent at all.
> But that still had the “boundary cut” problem of splitting the Pacific Ocean and creating the illusion of great distance between Asia and Hawaii.
By their definition of "continuous" you could do a similar draping of Winkel Tripel on 2 sides of a surface, eliminating the "boundary cut".
I mean I would say that is very, very inconvenient. Seems very awkward to use.
Centering on your preferred landmass (country, continent, city state) is a easy and natural.
I mention this because the majority of the commentary here is about the specific hemispheres chosen.
Most of us looked at this on a device that already contains either a 3D model of the Earth, or a web browser that will happily display one in seconds. We can now easily view undistorted views of the world whenever we want — why do we even need ‘better’ 2D maps of the world?
You like Issac Asimov, XML, and shoes with toes. ... You type in Dvorak.
With the Dymaxion, he had me with the first part, and the last part inspired me to learn Dvorak. I've been happily typing with it since 2016.