The most widely used global map is almost 500 years old and was designed for navigation. But landmasses near the poles look larger than their actual relative sizes, and those near the equator look muc ...

The Mercator map, which most of us grew up with, makes Africa look smaller and Greenland much larger than they are-but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

The Mercator Projection, which preserves shape and direction but distorts relative landmass. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia ...

The UN has endorsed a new world map using the Equal Earth projection. See how the map compares and why Africa gains the most relative size.

The new map is intended to reduce geographic distortions in educational materials, public communications and data ...

Africa has long been represented as smaller than its real size in maps, which are largely based on an ancient projection.

Pick which country is bigger, then watch it morph from Mercator to Equal Earth projection to see how close you were.

The U.N. voted to promote map projections that more accurately represent the world, drawing official opposition from the U.S.

However, the Mercator map comes with the trade-off of showing inaccurate sizes for continents. Landmasses become artificially enlarged the farther they are from the Earth’s equator, which leads to ...

We asked Jack Swab and Derek Alderman, cartographers and geographers who study the social and communicative power of maps, to ...

The UN General Assembly has endorsed a non-binding, African-led resolution promoting equal-area map projections such as Equal Earth to better represent the size of continents.

Letters: The transverse Mercator projection was created for European sailors – and it worked for their world, writes Paul Harwood ...