Two-sided and round world map is 'most accurate flat map ever', say astrophysicists

The map of the world often gets misrepresented when mapmakers try to lay down the spherical shape out on a flat paper. But, now a group of astrophysicists is being credited for producing one of the most accurate, "less distorted" world maps ever. Scientists from Princeton University have created a two-sided round map, which they are describing as "arguably the most mind-bending map to date". 

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The two-sided round map has smaller distance errors than any single-sided flat map, breaking his own previous record of the map he designed in 2007 along with Charles Mugnolo,  a 2005 Princeton alumnus. In Gott's map, areas at the edge are only 1.57 times larger than at the center. The map can be printed front-and-back on a single magazine page, ready for the reader to cut out. Gott worked with Robert Vanderbei and Drexel professor David Goldberg to make the revolutionary map.

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"One can’t make everything perfect. A map that is good at one thing may not be good at depicting other things. Our map is actually more like the globe than other flat maps. To see all of the globe, you have to rotate it; to see all of our new map, you simply have to flip it over," Princeton professors J. Richard Gott creator of the map said in a press release. 

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The Mercator projection

The Mercator projection, which is the most commonly used world map currently and is also used by Google Maps, is excellent at depicting local shapes. But it distorts surface areas so badly that Greenland is depicted as huge as Africa when in reality it is 14 times smaller than the continent. In the Mercator projection, the polar regions near the North and South Poles get completely copped-off. 

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