It's a problem that has plagued cartographers for centuries: How do you accurately represent a round world on a flat map? The most common world map used today, designed almost 450 years ago, is highly ...

Russell McLendon is a science writer with expertise in the natural environment, humans, and wildlife. He holds degrees in journalism and environmental anthropology. Like all planets, Earth isn't flat.

In 1375, a Spanish mapmaker made a world map we now refer to as the Catalan Atlas. For its time, the atlas was remarkably ...

The world is not flat. You knew that — but if you believe most maps of the world, we live on a neat, flat rectangle. Greenland? Huge. South America? Average. None of that is true, of course. It's the ...

Back when mapmaking was still a fledgling profession in the U.S., cartographers had a trick up their sleeves: they would insert fake towns into the maps they drew. Not to screw up travelers trying to ...

Jack has a degree in Medical Genetics from the University of Leicester.View full profile Jack has a degree in Medical Genetics from the University of Leicester. Buckle your seatbelt everyone – science ...

MAPS of the world have the impossible task of portraying the Earth—a three-dimensional shape—on a flat sheet of paper. Mapmakers have to choose a projection of the globe that approximates the basic ...