Map by Reddit user dranerertiam
Ever wonder why Greenland looks massive compared to Africa on Google Maps, even though Africa is actually 14 times larger? Welcome to the wild world of map projections, where the flat representation of our round planet creates some seriously mind-bending distortions.
The Circle That Became an Egg
This fascinating map shows what happens when you draw a perfect 3,100-mile (5,000 km) circle around Paris using the Mercator projection that most of us see online every day.
Instead of the neat circle you’d expect, you get something that looks more like a stretched egg, bulging dramatically toward the poles.
The purple and orange zone represents everywhere within 3,100 miles of the City of Light. Notice how the circle appears to stretch way up into the Arctic, encompassing massive chunks of Greenland and northern Canada, while barely dipping into Africa at the bottom.
This isn’t because the Earth is egg-shaped around Paris (it’s not), but because of how we’ve chosen to flatten our round world onto flat screens.
Why Your Maps Lie to You
The Mercator projection was introduced by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 and was designed as a navigation tool where straight lines represent actual compass bearings.
Although the linear scale is equal in all directions around any point, thus preserving the angles and the shapes of small objects, the Mercator projection distorts the size of objects as the latitude increases from the equator to the poles.
Think of it like trying to peel an orange and lay the peel flat. The pieces near the “equator” of your orange stay roughly the same size, but the pieces from the “poles” get stretched out dramatically to fill the gaps.
The Real-World Impact
This distortion isn’t just a fun geography fact, it actually shapes how we see the world. On a Mercator projection, Greenland appears about as big as South America, but in reality, South America is eight times larger than Greenland.
Countries in the Western World, especially in Europe, are overestimated by this projection, while African and South American countries are severely shrunken in proportion.
When you look at this Paris circle map, you’re seeing this distortion in action. Those northern regions that look so dramatically far from Paris? Many are actually closer than parts of Africa that appear just outside the circle’s southern edge.
What This Means for You
Next time you’re planning a trip or just browsing the world on your phone, remember that Google Maps uses a Mercator Projection, which makes it easier to zoom to local areas, but it doesn’t give you the full picture of our planet’s true proportions.
The Paris circle map is a perfect example of why cartographers often say there’s no such thing as a perfect map, just maps that are useful for different purposes.
The Mercator projection excels at navigation but fails spectacularly at showing true size relationships. Understanding this helps us become more geographically literate and less likely to unconsciously absorb the biases built into our everyday digital maps.
So the next time someone tells you how “huge” Alaska or Greenland is, you can smile knowingly and remember the wonky Paris circle that taught you how maps can stretch the truth.
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