Merged Mercator projection to be phased out?

[Orphia Nay]

When I was a kid, it always seemed to me that Greenland was much bigger than Australia, even though our teachers said the opposite was true. Which was why I went down to the library and looked at a globe.

Indeed, Australia is over three times the area of Greenland.

I note that Google Maps doesn't even reflect that, nor MapQuest. Apple Maps is more of a proper globe but still not great. US-centric the lot of them, I'd say.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Way to infantilise the argument.

Mercator served a very useful function once upon a time. Those times are over, and nobody needs those straight lines to navigate now that we've got global GPS. Mercator is entirely redundant. We only hold onto it because of tradition, and because the alternatives freak CJ out.

And it's also Eurocentric. And whether that's a problem depends on whether you believe that Eurocentrism is fundamentally and definitionally racist.

It's not redundant.
Anyone that goes offshore without a paper chart and the ability to navigate using it and the appropriate instruments is a fool.
Using a chart and Sextant is still part of offshore qualification for navigation.
Even doing coastal work safely should involve a chart as a secondary check and backup.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

It actually makes me mad. There is climate change, hunger, war .. but sure, UN has to solve stupid things like this.

The UN works on those things, too. But you know that, of course.

 

[Dr.Sid]

Indeed, Australia is over three times the area of Greenland.

I note that Google Maps doesn't even reflect that, nor MapQuest. Apple Maps is more of a proper globe but still not great. US-centric the lot of them, I'd say.

Mercator is not good for US either, with Alaska and Hawaii being in vastly different latitudes.
It's good for navigation, and it's good for simplicity, that's why it's popular in computer maps. But google does have globe view. And US companies being US-centric ? You don't say ..

 

[Safe-Keeper]

Mercator served a very useful function once upon a time. Those times are over, and nobody needs those straight lines to navigate now that we've got global GPS.

Did you read my last post?
GPS uses flat maps. Those maps necessarily have to be projections of a round Earth onto a flat surface. Guess which projection digital maps often uses? Mercator, or the more 'advanced' Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM).

Also, as others have pointed out, although we live in 2026, paper maps are still very much a thing. I never go on long-distance hikes without either official hiking maps or map printouts.

And it's also Eurocentric.

When you call it Eurocentric you make it sound like it was created that way for political or racist reasons. It's a navigation map, created the way it was because it allowed you to take out a bearing and draw it as a straight line on the map. It was never meant to be used as a world map in the first place. The people who refer to projections like Equal Earth as a corrected or more accurate world map don't know that different projections have different 'tasks' to solve in the first place.

 

[Andy_Ross]

.When you call it Eurocentric you make it sound like it was created that way for political or racist reasons. It's a navigation map, created the way it was because it allowed you to take out a bearing and draw it as a straight line on the map. It was never meant to be used as a world map in the first place. The people who refer to projections like Equal Earth as a corrected or more accurate world map don't know that different projections have different 'tasks' to solve in the first place.

It was very much created that way for political reasons, why do you think the Prime Meridian is through Greenwich?

 

[Dr.Sid]

It was very much created that way for political reasons, why do you think the Prime Meridian is through Greenwich?

Location of prime meridian has little to do with Mercator. Mercator would keep all its features with any prime meridian.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

...The shortest way is to go south east, then slowly go further east until you are half way there and very far to the south then slowly turn the ship to the north. That is what modern cargo ships do. The main issue with this is that it makes for hard nagivation.

Is this essentially the same as a 'great circle' flight path ?

 

[theprestige]

Way to infantilise the argument.

I think the Togolese delegation is making an infantile request. I'm glad I'm getting my point across.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

It was very much created that way for political reasons, why do you think the Prime Meridian is through Greenwich?

Source? I just asked ChatGPT and it told me it's basically a myth that the projection was deliberately made the way it was to make Europe look larger. Granted, it pretty much only used Wikipedia and a single Norwegian encyclopedia for source material. Of course I guess they could have put the standard line (the line at which the map is 100% accurate and nothing is distorted) farther north, but it also makes perfect sense to have it run along the equator as that's at the exact centre of the map.

The Greenwich line was AFAIK put in Greenwich for political/power play reasons, but I don't see what that has to do with the Mercator projection. edit: ninja'd.

 

[theprestige]

Ironically, the official logo of the UN is a north polar projection map. Makes Africa look super big and important, and makes the entire western hemisphere look super irrelevant. Maybe it's time for Brazil to join the Trumpian smol pp brigade.

 

[theprestige]

Source? I just asked ChatGPT and it told me it's basically a myth that the projection was deliberately made the way it was to make Europe look larger. Granted, it pretty much only used Wikipedia and a single Norwegian encyclopedia for source material. Of course I guess they could have put the standard line (the line at which the map is 100% accurate and nothing is distorted) farther north, but it also makes perfect sense to have it run along the equator as that's at the exact centre of the map.

The Greenwich line was AFAIK put in Greenwich for political/power play reasons, but I don't see what that has to do with the Mercator projection. edit: ninja'd.

It seems reasonable to me that the guys doing the work get to put the line wherever they like.

It sure sucks for Africa that its coastline was not substantially shaped by glaciers, but that doesn't make the ice ages Eurocentric or ethnically bigoted.

 

[jimbob]

Of course I guess they could have put the standard line (the line at which the map is 100% accurate and nothing is distorted) farther north, but it also makes perfect sense to have it run along the equator as that's at the exact centre of the map

They could have, but the regions of greatest distortion would have been somewhere other than the poles, which would have been very confusing for navigation for two reasons. Firstly, the directions would vary across the map would vary across the map. You could still work them out from the location of the poles but it's more difficult.

Secondly, the regions of greatest distortion would cross regions that people would want to navigate.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

It seems reasonable to me that the guys doing the work get to put the line wherever they like.

Thread!

 

[Andy_Ross]

Source? I just asked ChatGPT and it told me it's basically a myth that the projection was deliberately made the way it was to make Europe look larger. Granted, it pretty much only used Wikipedia and a single Norwegian encyclopedia for source material. Of course I guess they could have put the standard line (the line at which the map is 100% accurate and nothing is distorted) farther north, but it also makes perfect sense to have it run along the equator as that's at the exact centre of the map.

The Greenwich line was AFAIK put in Greenwich for political/power play reasons, but I don't see what that has to do with the Mercator projection. edit: ninja'd.

The location of the Prime Meridian was a contest between Britain and France.

In the end Britain won because of the size of the empire which brought the biggest quantity of trade, largest merchant fleet and the quantity and quality of charts being published.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

The location of the Prime Meridian was a contest between Britain and France.

Source?

There seems to be a little more to it than that.

In October 1884 the Greenwich Meridian was selected by delegates (forty-one delegates representing twenty-five nations) to the International Meridian Conference held in Washington, D.C., United States, to be the common zero of longitude and standard of time reckoning throughout the world.[16]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_meridian#cite_note-19

 

[catsmate]

The location of the Prime Meridian was a contest between Britain and France.

In the end Britain won because of the size of the empire which brought the biggest quantity of trade, largest merchant fleet and the quantity and quality of charts being published.

And the Catholic Church. Originally the meridian passed through Rome.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Source?

There seems to be a little more to it than that.

France held on to their own meridian until 1911

From your link.

In 1884, at the International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C., 22 countries voted to adopt the Greenwich meridian as the prime meridian of the world. The French argued for a neutral line, mentioning the Azores and the Bering Strait, but eventually abstained and continued to use the Paris meridian until 1911.

 

[alfaniner]

I wouldn't be surprised if the Starfleet/United Federation of Planets has Earth centrally located.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

It actually makes me mad. There is climate change, hunger, war .. but sure, UN has to solve stupid things like this.

Right, because back in 1992 the United States developed a protocol for dealing with climate change that the UN tragically never ratified -oh, wait, no, that was the other way around.

Oh, and again in 2016 there was that Paris climate change accord organized by the United States that practically every country in the world signed, except the United Nations withdrew -oh, wait, no, that was the other way around, too.