A trio of scientists have devised a new way of trying to represent our spherical planet as a flat image with a new projection class printing the map as a double-sided circle, Phys.org reports. The double-sided Gott projections involve the splitting of a globe and the pressure of the separate hemispheres on separate sides. The paper is the work of J. Richard Gott, Robert Vanderbei and David Goldberg of the University of Princeton and Drexel.
While 3D light bulbs are the most accurate way to represent the layout of the earth’s surface, it is much more convenient to refer to a 2D representation. There are different ways to convert this 3D shape into 2D, which are called map projections, but none of them are perfect.
The best known projection is probably the Mercator projection (used by Google Maps for local area maps), but it is really distorted near the North and South Poles. The Triple Store is another option, and it’s the one that National Geographic uses for its world maps, but it still divides the Pacific in two.
In 2007, Goldberg and Gott devised a system to record the accuracy of flat cards, the closer a score is to zero, the more accurate it is. An earth, for example, would get a perfect zero. According to their calculations, the Mercator projection achieves 8,296 and Shop Tripel performs better with 4,563. Their own azimuthal parallel double-sided projection meanwhile achieves 0.888. “We believe this is the most accurate flat map of the earth yet,” the trio wrote.
It’s technically flat, but printing a card on two sides of a piece of paper brings clear limitations. The scientists acknowledge that ‘our double-sided flat card actually looks more like the globe than the other flat cards’ because you cannot see both sides at the same time. Instead, they consider it the kind of card that could possibly be included as an extra sheet in a magazine, or printed on cardboard or plastic and stored in boxes.
Read this video for more information on the issues with 2D projections Vox below.