Except, that your picture shows the continents in the usual Mercator projection distorted way.
This type of projection makes countries nearer to the poles look way larger than they actually are.
I've often wished map apps would recenter the Mercator projection for wherever you are in the world. So you could zoom out on e.g. Russia and see the world map as if the 'equator' were through Russia and the 'poles' at ... somewhere in the North Atlantic and South Indian Ocean?
I volunteer to implement the backend for this, if someone else will do the frontend. It should be easy enough to do a spherical rotation before whatever data gets passed to the projection math.
If you want an azimuthal equidistant projection centered somewhere, this website already exists, but that doesn't help us here.
here's a replica i just made using the equal earth projection
and here's one using the authagraph projection
i wanted to make one using the mollweide projection, but i couldn't find a good blank map with borders to use
they're both poor work, but i don't want to put in the effort to fix them, and it's pretty funny imagining icelanders getting mad that i put them in north america
both used blank world map images ripped from wikipedia plus getpaint.net
Came to the comments section to say this too. The contiguous States should also look visually smaller than China next to them, so I think they've blown them up to represent the full 9.8m km^2^.
The US figures include coastal and territorial waters. The Chinese figures exclude them. This is supposedly because it's impossiblebto know what water area is claimed by China.
However, China clearly has a greater land mass area; and measurements including accepted water area for China are bigger than the US including its waters.
Therefore, while it can be determined that China has a larger area excluding coastal and territorial waters, it is unclear which country has a larger area including coastal and territorial waters.
I'd really love to see what Africa would look like without randomly created colonial superstates. I know Atlas Pro did a video about that, but not sure how accurate that is.
Also what Europe if every people group with a unintelligible dialect had a nation. Like Catalan, Occitan, Romansh, Bavarian etc.. Where I live the people in the next village over officially speak the same language, but it's completely unintelligible. So not a different language for political reasons only really.
Same for India, if the British never came what countries would exist in that region? All the states pretty much have different languages, cultures, food, politics, etc so it's more like an EU with a common military
It's basically to make it clear and avoid confusion which can arise, e.g. by including only the European part of russia, as the Europe-Asia border is not uniquely defined.
I'm also interested in the true size comparison without the skewed size that occurs further and further from the equator when you make a flat, rectangular map from a sphere.
On thetruesize.com they seem to use some equal-angle projection and the countries are reprojected while being moved. There, e.g. russia doesn't seem to be that narrow when placed on top of Africa.
I mean, Europe conveniently minus the part that is Russia is a pretty political area that is closer to the EU which is also not a country but has similarities.
How is Europe minus Russia not a political boundary, even if it's an exclusionary one? What non-political reason is there to subtract the area of Russia from the area of the continent?
What I wanted to say is it's not a country as the comment about me implied. The EU might be something like a "supercountry" but Europe minus Russia doesn't not have any specific political structures you could call a country
Sure, but the majority of it has a very high degree of diplomatic and economic cooperation. The map of Europe also appears to be excluding the region of Kazakhstan west of the Ural River, it's a pretty arbitrary map even as far as the distinction of Europe/Asia vs Eurasia doesn't already seem a bit arbitrary.
I'm not feeling as charitable as you. The fact that they started with "no offense" tells me they know they're saying something offensive. I think it's a way of saying "Sure they're geographically big, but they don't contribute as much to the world as western (white?) countries.
What does that question even have to do with the post?
And we're talking about the African continent. There are 54 African countries/nations. They have a combined GDP of $2.8 trillion USD, similar to France.
Every superpower is currently in a race to mine the natural resources. A lots gonna happen in the next ten years and I doubt much of it will be good for the average African.
"no offense" lol and then you go on to ask a random ass question that's usually meant to offend. why are you bringing up GDPs in Africa anyway?
if you're actually trying to learn something, then what's the "no offense" for? it sounds like you want us to draw a controversial conclusion - probably that Africans are lazy or something. if you actually believe this and are behaving this way online, then there's probably no point in trying to explain how the consequences of colonization continue to hold back development in many African nations.
why don't you take your dogwhistles elsewhere, or at least learn some social cues. "no offense" is a pretty idiotic thing to say and might best be removed from your vocabulary. because, no offense, you sound like a fucking moron.
Contenents are generally bigger than countries yes.
Here's an actual continent size comparison
Except, that your picture shows the continents in the usual Mercator projection distorted way. This type of projection makes countries nearer to the poles look way larger than they actually are.
Antarctica is definitely not Mercator there!
And finding a good projection for the entirety of Asia would be difficult.
Now, using Mercator Russia in the OP image with Africa.... But I've already complained about that in two other crossposts ;-)
I'll give you the point on Antarctica, but using multiple different projections is somehow even worse imho
Any equal area projection recentered for each continent would work.
Recentered is the thing.
I've often wished map apps would recenter the Mercator projection for wherever you are in the world. So you could zoom out on e.g. Russia and see the world map as if the 'equator' were through Russia and the 'poles' at ... somewhere in the North Atlantic and South Indian Ocean?
Bonus points if you can rotate too
I volunteer to implement the backend for this, if someone else will do the frontend. It should be easy enough to do a spherical rotation before whatever data gets passed to the projection math.
If you want an azimuthal equidistant projection centered somewhere, this website already exists, but that doesn't help us here.
here's a replica i just made using the equal earth projection
and here's one using the authagraph projection
i wanted to make one using the mollweide projection, but i couldn't find a good blank map with borders to use
they're both poor work, but i don't want to put in the effort to fix them, and it's pretty funny imagining icelanders getting mad that i put them in north america
both used blank world map images ripped from wikipedia plus getpaint.net
Why does this image use the numbers for the entire US but only shows the continental US?
Came to the comments section to say this too. The contiguous States should also look visually smaller than China next to them, so I think they've blown them up to represent the full 9.8m km^2^.
Because if they were consistent or honest, they'd have to admit that the US is actuslly smaller than China (or Canada, which they chose to exclude).
The US is bigger than China according to every source I found.
Wikipedia explains this quite well.
The US figures include coastal and territorial waters. The Chinese figures exclude them. This is supposedly because it's impossiblebto know what water area is claimed by China.
However, China clearly has a greater land mass area; and measurements including accepted water area for China are bigger than the US including its waters.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area#cite_note-12
I'd really love to see what Africa would look like without randomly created colonial superstates. I know Atlas Pro did a video about that, but not sure how accurate that is.
Also what Europe if every people group with a unintelligible dialect had a nation. Like Catalan, Occitan, Romansh, Bavarian etc.. Where I live the people in the next village over officially speak the same language, but it's completely unintelligible. So not a different language for political reasons only really.
Same for India, if the British never came what countries would exist in that region? All the states pretty much have different languages, cultures, food, politics, etc so it's more like an EU with a common military
Papua New Guinea/Indonesia and Africa have like a thousand to a two thousand languages each, I think it'd be funnier doing that with them
In that case India would be a ton of tiny nations as well.
Interactive tool: thetruesize.com.
It's fun to see how the shapes and areas change while moved around and being reprojected.
"excluding Russia"
includes Russia
I'm confused.
Or was there a text saying something like "all can fit in together, except Russia?"
Update. Didn't see the asterisk near the word Europe, was confused.
It is obviously talking about "the continent Europe, excluding Russia". What is there to be confused about?
Ahhh, I didn't notice the other asterisk near "Europe".
Honestly I missed the asterisk too, but I assumed instead something was cut from the screenshot.
The star is meant to point you at the compariosn to Europe which in this case does not include the european part of Russia.
Ah, struggled to find the asterisk near Europe word.
Thank you!
It's basically to make it clear and avoid confusion which can arise, e.g. by including only the European part of russia, as the Europe-Asia border is not uniquely defined.
Thanks! Didn't see the asterisk there
I'm also interested in the true size comparison without the skewed size that occurs further and further from the equator when you make a flat, rectangular map from a sphere.
I'm not sure, but I assume they've used some equal-area projection for the representation, so its angles are skewed, not the size.
Or just scaled the country images to match land area?
On thetruesize.com they seem to use some equal-angle projection and the countries are reprojected while being moved. There, e.g. russia doesn't seem to be that narrow when placed on top of Africa.
URL doesn't work for me
Thx. I've corrected it.
LOL. Africa would be a tiny crumb in AUSTRALIA!
No matter the fact that I know it’s accurate, my mind just has problems accepting this.
You're comparing countries to an entire continent. It's not surprising that the continent is larger.
TIL Europe is a country
As a European, I guess we should start referring the USA as a continent, it would make more sense to talk about things with comparable sizes
I mean, Europe conveniently minus the part that is Russia is a pretty political area that is closer to the EU which is also not a country but has similarities.
But it isn't the EU but Europe excluding Russia which isn't a political entity let alone a nation state
How is Europe minus Russia not a political boundary, even if it's an exclusionary one? What non-political reason is there to subtract the area of Russia from the area of the continent?
What I wanted to say is it's not a country as the comment about me implied. The EU might be something like a "supercountry" but Europe minus Russia doesn't not have any specific political structures you could call a country
Sure, but the majority of it has a very high degree of diplomatic and economic cooperation. The map of Europe also appears to be excluding the region of Kazakhstan west of the Ural River, it's a pretty arbitrary map even as far as the distinction of Europe/Asia vs Eurasia doesn't already seem a bit arbitrary.
No offense, but in current economic system, since last 10 years, on average, what is the economic contribution of Africa compared to world?
Being underdeveloped in infrastructure and its original history and identity broken and exploited by the west and currently china.
I cant believe it’s doing well on economic output in comparison with those established exploiters.
Now on why the fuck is this rhetoric even relevant to a cool map guid in how our perspective of size on earth is distorted?
I'm not feeling as charitable as you. The fact that they started with "no offense" tells me they know they're saying something offensive. I think it's a way of saying "Sure they're geographically big, but they don't contribute as much to the world as western (white?) countries.
I've read some of his commebts, and it's the worse answer. He is...kind of a shitbag.
What does that question even have to do with the post?
And we're talking about the African continent. There are 54 African countries/nations. They have a combined GDP of $2.8 trillion USD, similar to France.
2.8T DOLLAR, that's right!
Every superpower is currently in a race to mine the natural resources. A lots gonna happen in the next ten years and I doubt much of it will be good for the average African.
If Africans make the right choices, they'll definitely benefit and prosper. They see who has worked for them.
"no offense" lol and then you go on to ask a random ass question that's usually meant to offend. why are you bringing up GDPs in Africa anyway?
if you're actually trying to learn something, then what's the "no offense" for? it sounds like you want us to draw a controversial conclusion - probably that Africans are lazy or something. if you actually believe this and are behaving this way online, then there's probably no point in trying to explain how the consequences of colonization continue to hold back development in many African nations.
why don't you take your dogwhistles elsewhere, or at least learn some social cues. "no offense" is a pretty idiotic thing to say and might best be removed from your vocabulary. because, no offense, you sound like a fucking moron.