[HN Gopher] The True Size Of
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The True Size Of
Author : thunderbong
Score : 206 points
Date : 2025-04-26 15:41 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (thetruesize.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thetruesize.com)
| jmclnx wrote:
| Very nice
| comrade1234 wrote:
| No wonder china is investing so heavily into Africa, including
| having Chinese settle there.
| peakskill wrote:
| We need a new world map that accurately portrays countries by
| size. The downstream effects would go crazy.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| There's already several, Gall Peters being the most (in)famous.
| Other than accurately showing size, such maps are pretty
| useless. Mercator is actually useful for navigation because it
| maintains angles, all "size accurate" projections have to
| sacrifice that.
| geor9e wrote:
| You think that doesn't exist? You think the cartographers and
| mathematicians in Mercater's age were just sitting on their
| hands?
| thraxil wrote:
| Like a globe?
| bregma wrote:
| Like a globe, but flat, and make sure angles stay accurate so
| you can still use a compass effectively.
| tmtvl wrote:
| Wait, all that AND have it be size-accurate? ...how about
| we make it flat in 3 dimensions, but uneven along a 4th
| one?
| jasode wrote:
| _> a new world map that accurately portrays countries by size._
|
| Search for _" equal-area"_ in the list of map projections:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections
|
| You can see that any translation from 3D sphere to 2D plane
| will always create a tradeoff of geometry somewhere. E.g.
| Distorted shapes and lines, torn oceans, etc.
| os2warpman wrote:
| > The downstream effects would go crazy.
|
| I used to say "No human being who has ever lived has made a
| consequential decision because 'Greenland big brah' and people
| just need to get over it."
|
| But given the current administration, I...
| gus_massa wrote:
| > _The downstream effects would go crazy._
|
| Wars are won with tanks^W drones, not by measuring the area in
| a map. Laypeople may be confused, but when a government decides
| to invade another country or add some economical penalty, they
| know the real data like real-world-surface, GDP, number of
| weapons, ...
| diggernet wrote:
| Pretty neat. One tip it took me a while to realize is that after
| you tap on a country, the compass rose (now the same color as the
| country) can be used to rotate it.
|
| But why do countries rotate to the left as you drag them north
| and rotate to the right as you drag them south?
| geor9e wrote:
| I think part of that is an illusion, since for something bowing
| upwards, the usualy anchor point of top left seems rotated
| clockwise.
|
| But there is still a real rotation - look at wyoming or
| colorado for a perfect rectangle. My guess is the div element
| isn't quite centered - perhaps too much padding on the right
| edge, causing the center point to be off to the right. So when
| it bows you get the rotation bias
| bregma wrote:
| It's a widely observed phenomenon that as a country start to go
| south it moves to the right.
|
| This explains much of the current global political situation.
| imzadi wrote:
| I think it's the other way around. As a country moves to the
| right it starts to go south.
| xg15 wrote:
| Mercator projection striking again.
|
| The largest surprise for me (besides the massive size of Africa
| and South America of course) was that Australia has roughly the
| same area as the entire US. Somehow I had always imagined it
| smaller.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Brazil is the largest surprise for me. It's an absolute massive
| country.
| andretf wrote:
| Wikipedia says contiguous USA is smaller, 95% of Brazil size.
| HdS84 wrote:
| I wish schools would stop using it so much. Mercator is useful,
| yes. But having good size comparisons is much more important
| for most everyday tasks.
| pif wrote:
| A flat map on a wall does not take any three-dimensional
| space. You can't say the same for a globe, though!
| Sharlin wrote:
| It's useful for navigation in the open ocean without satnav
| or even a chronometer, which is what it was designed for in
| the 1500s. Not for much else.
|
| Is the use of Mercator in schools common, globally? Based on
| what I've read on the internet it's common in the US, but I
| have no idea about other countries. In Finland I think I only
| ever saw Robinson or Winkel-tripel type compromise
| projections. Mercator was maybe used as an example of how
| projections distort things.
| scbrg wrote:
| Huh. Swede here. Went to school in the 80:ies and 90:ies.
| Only ever saw Mercator. Perhaps things have changed since.
| HdS84 wrote:
| German is Mercator only. Learned about different projection
| on the internet years after school
| blueflow wrote:
| Is (was?) in Geographie Gymnasium Klasse 6 or 7.
| HdS84 wrote:
| I only visited Realschuler and switched to gymnasium in
| 11. Tbh I don't remember much of my geography lessons,
| was not my primary interest in school
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| It preserves angles, which is what makes it useful in
| navigation. Mercator is bad at relative sizes for places
| far apart, but when you look at a small patch shapes are
| less distorted. For that reason, online maps use a version
| of Mercator.
| xg15 wrote:
| I wonder if Mercator maps that aren't aligned with the
| equator would already do the trick. (pinging Randall Munroe)
| blueflow wrote:
| Which everyday tasks?
| alluro2 wrote:
| Wow - in my head, Australia was somehow ~20-25% the size of US
| (I'm from Europe) - really surprising, and shows how misleading
| the projection can be in this regard.
| kmoser wrote:
| I was really surprised that China isn't much bigger than the
| US. I always assumed it was about twice as large.
| maxglute wrote:
| The real surprise is ~95% lives on 1/3 of that land. Other
| 1/3 is plateau, 1/3 is desert. An extra dumb derrived stat I
| like is about ~25% of the worlds smokers are concentrated on
| ~0.6% of earth's land mass (that 1/3 of PRC).
| fhennig wrote:
| I really enjoy this! I wish it would also support cities, it
| would help me get a better sense of the size of a city to compare
| it to one I'm familiar with already. But I guess city limits are
| less well defined that country limits. Anyway, great project!
| xiconfjs wrote:
| +1 for cities
| lpribis wrote:
| Use this site for that https://acme.com/same_scale/. It lets
| you compare any two map views at the same scale.
| zamadatix wrote:
| That site only seems lock the zoom value of the two maps
| together, not correct for distortions. E.g. zoom in on
| Svalbard on one side and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
| on the other. Svalbard appears larger despite being many
| times smaller. This means if you zoom into Longyearbyen it
| will appear several times larger than it should compared to
| say Kinshasa.
|
| Longyearbyen is a pathological example but it's quite easy to
| end up thinking a city in the UK is ~1.75 linearly and ~3x by
| area compared to one on the equator using this site.
| volemo wrote:
| Surely any city is small enough that projection distortion is
| negligible? So you can just open cities on two maps side by
| side and zoom in/out till the scales are equal.
| Vagantem wrote:
| Gall Peters Projection scene (From "The West Wing" S2E16)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-PrBRtTY
| hereaiham wrote:
| What a nice well made tool. I was shocked how massive Algeria is!
| Maybe larger than half of Europe. And Tunisia which is a tiny
| country in my head, seems to be not tiny at all.
| EA wrote:
| Algeria is about 23.4% the size of Europe.
| ljsprague wrote:
| I would guess you included Russia and OP mentally excluded
| it.
| ljsprague wrote:
| This is why it's crazy to think there's room for Algerians in
| Europe.
| shaftway wrote:
| Why would Algeria's land size have anything to do with that?
|
| Algeria is more than 80% desert and has a population of ~46
| million. Non-desert area accounts for ~480k km^2 out of their
| ~2400k km^2 land . Europe has far more livable space than
| Algeria does. Spain is pretty comparable with a population of
| ~48 million in 505k km^2.
|
| I get that there are political reasons, but "Algeria is big
| so Algerians shouldn't need to leave" is a pretty surface-
| level observation.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Oh my - history spam. I had to long-press the back button to find
| this HN page again.
| mijoharas wrote:
| If you drag something large over so it covers the south pole the
| shading can invert so that only the region covering the south
| pole is unshaded.
|
| That's how I proved that the actual size of Australia is
| approximately 90% of the area of the globe. Who knew the mercator
| projection could be so confusing! :)
| nexle wrote:
| slightly off topic but it should be a crime for a website
| hijacking the back button
| pif wrote:
| It should be a crime for web browser letting the back button be
| hijacked in the first place!
| kazinator wrote:
| It shuld be a crime for web browsers to download and execute
| code as a matter of loading a page.
| arp242 wrote:
| Nothing is "hijacked"; it just sets the hash to allow
| permalinks. It should probably actually load the state when
| pressing back (or replace the current entry instead of adding a
| new one). But that's just a bug and not malice, as some seem to
| assume.
| boxed wrote:
| So much tech that can be accomplished by just using Waterman
| butterfly, Peters, Dymaxion or any of a host of other
| projections.
| dmd wrote:
| I feel very lucky to have grown up with a huge (~ 75 cm diameter)
| globe as a centerpiece in the living room; I never ended up with
| Mercator-derived misconceptions in the first place.
| blueflow wrote:
| Peeling oranges (the way bored kids do) also teaches you this.
| lokimedes wrote:
| I wish Europe (EU) could be selected as a common entity. The
| continents as well.
| pif wrote:
| I wish people learnt that (a) European Union is not Europe, and
| (b) Europe is a continent.
| FredPret wrote:
| Would increase the data maintenance requirements from ~0 to >0
| since the EU grows and shrinks every so often
| amiga386 wrote:
| Since 1973 there have been 9 changes to EU borders (in 1973,
| 1981, 1985, 1986, 1995, 2004, 2007, 2013 and 2020)
|
| Since 1973, at least 69 sovereign states have been created or
| altered! That's not even counting states that have had
| multiple changes to their territory in that time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_da.
| .. -> sort by date of latest territorial change
| flerchin wrote:
| It's interesting to me how the large countries are roughly
| similarly sized. Canada, Australia, US, Brazil, China, Russia,
| India are all within a factor of 2, and it shows when you drag it
| across eachother. India and Russia as outliers slightly.
| Miraltar wrote:
| Russia is literally 5 times bigger than India
| lucianbr wrote:
| This is a tautology. You defined the category "large countries"
| such that they are as you say, close in size to each other.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Brazil is huge.
| Raztuf wrote:
| Every time I end up on this website I'm reminded how small my
| country, Belgium, truly is.
| leonheld wrote:
| It's about half of my state in Brazil (which is one of the
| smallest in the country). However, I've been to Belgium many
| times and it _feels_ bigger. I think the key is the population
| density: 388 /km^2 in Belgium vs 70/km^2 here. Like, yes, it's
| big, but empty space is truly boring.
| izzydata wrote:
| It's interesting how Russia appears to only be about twice as
| large as the United States or China, but on a typical map it
| looks at least 3-4 times larger.
| andrewl wrote:
| I've been using, and sharing, this site for several years. I
| think it's excellent. The two things I'd like to see are the
| provinces, at least in larger countries, and large bodies of
| water. I'd like to be able to drag Ontario, Lake Superior, the
| Caspian Sea, New South Wales, and so on, around the way you can
| with countries and US states.
| internet_points wrote:
| omg brazil is huge
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| Related: amazing video about map projections:
| https://youtu.be/bpp0xCknQAQ?si=AL-Qt36AeUH_oSeI
| redbell wrote:
| Really cool work, love it!
|
| I first discovered this about three months ago in a reddit
| comment under 'r/geography', and I still, from time to time, use
| it and enjoy it. Back then, I posted it here in HN, but zero
| traction!
|
| Anyway, for those interested in previous discussions, here we
| are:
|
| (2020), 556 points, 266 comments:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25104787
|
| (2017), 193 points, 66 comments:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13327973
|
| (2019), 155 points, 49 comments:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20898538
|
| (2015), 105 points, 36 comments:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182024
| notorandit wrote:
| Try Ukraine
| turtlebits wrote:
| Very cool! TIL Greenland is smaller than Argentina.
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| this is so incredible. I'd love if it supported continents.
| nasvay_factory wrote:
| use all the time
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I have been told so often about how the Mercator projection
| misrepresents the size of countries that seeing it like this is
| underwhelming to me.
|
| It turns out that even when put in the middle of Africa, Russia
| is still massive. And even without the projection, Greenland is
| not small either, which, in a sense, makes Denmark the largest
| European country by far.
| zanellato19 wrote:
| Yeah, the Mercator projection misrepresents a lot of the Global
| South. So of course Russia is still massive.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I'd say it mostly misrepresents Europe.
|
| A combination of Europe being generally close to the pole, so
| the projection makes it look big, and the large number of
| small countries and fine geographical features, giving it a
| high concentration of details.
| blueflow wrote:
| Why the South? What about the North? Symmetric globe?
|
| And why is the shrinking considered a misrepresentation, but
| the enlargement of high latitudes apparently not?
| jkrems wrote:
| > Why the South? What about the North? Symmetric globe?
|
| The globe isn't symmetric when it comes to these terms.
| They don't refer to the actual two hemispheres, split at
| the equator. The "south" contains the equator and the
| "north" ends way before the equator.
|
| > And why is the shrinking considered a misrepresentation,
| but the enlargement of high latitudes apparently not?
|
| Because being overrepresented (looking bigger) is typically
| an advantage. Both are misrepresentations but the direction
| matters. Some of this is only a real problem if
| geographical area and population are correlated. Which, at
| least in broad strokes, is true here.
| blueflow wrote:
| Both of my questions have no correct answers if you are
| unbiased. My intent was to get people thinking.
| pirgidb wrote:
| You asked what you thought were open ended questions but
| turned out to have concrete answers. Maybe you are also
| one of these people who should reflect?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Move Greenland over the DRC, or Brazil over just about
| anywhere.
| imzadi wrote:
| I hate that I can't go back without long pressing the back button
| and selecting from the history.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| chile is really fun to move around
| maxglute wrote:
| I had to pare down a optmistic peru itenurary once I realized the
| country was like 1/3 the size of Ontario.
| dmurray wrote:
| I would have thought I could reasonably tour Ontario, but holy
| shit, it's 3 times the size of Peru?
| MattSteelblade wrote:
| Peru is 500k square miles, while Ontario 415k square miles.
| foota wrote:
| Did anyone else expect this to be about the C++ sizeof operator?
| toredo1729_2 wrote:
| Haha, same here
| cik wrote:
| I'm more surprised that anyone didn't
| sxv wrote:
| it's australia engulfing europe for me.
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