400-year-old cheating. Scientists have proven that Russia and Greenland are smaller than previously thought (video)

4 million square kilometers. In addition, the latter is essentially three times greater than North America and much larger than Russia, however, if you look at the map, the opposite seems true. In focus. Technology has appeared its Telegram channel. Subscribe not to miss the latest and most intrusive news from the world of science! What is happening? The whole thing is 400-year-old, which is explained by the Mercator's project, which is most common in classes and geography textbooks.

This project was created in 1596 by geographer Gerard Mercator, and then exceeded all possible competitors. As a result of this projection, many countries, including Russia, Canada and Greenland, seem much larger than they really are - this is explained by the effect called the "distortion of the world map". Mercart used Prosecution gives the right forms of land arrays, but distorts their size in favor of land in the north.

One of the most striking examples is Canada and Russia - on the map of the world they occupy about a quarter of the Earth's surface, but in fact they account for only 5% of the surface of our planet. Another interesting example is Australia, which seems much smaller than Alaska, although in fact it is the sixth largest country in the world and 4. 5 times exceeds the size of Alaska.

The main problem when creating a world map is the fact that it is impossible to portray the reality of a spherical globe on a flat surface. It was with this problem that the cartographers faced centuries and lost every time. As a result, the shape of the world cards, as a rule, were as diverse as possible - from cones to hearts. However, the variety gradually came to naught, and the model invented by Gerard Mercator, firmly strengthened among cartographers and travelers.

In a new study, a meteorological bureau specialist, Neil Keye, studied the distortion of the Mercator card and created a two -dimensional idea of ​​how our planet really looks. The results indicate that the countries of the Northern Hemisphere are usually much smaller than we think about them. During the study, the scientist used GGPlot, which is a package of data visualization for statistical programming, and introduced the meteoburo on the real size of countries.

After that, the researcher created a real map of our world, using a stergrapher that allows you to move the sphere to a plane. All this allowed the climatologist to look differently in the real size of countries. For example, according to Mercator's project, North America looks as big as Africa, and Greenland can also be compared to it in size. However, in fact, Africa is actually greater than both - in fact, it could be entered in North America, India, Argentina, Tunisia, and possibly something.