The AuthaGraph World Map was an attempt to show the true size of the countries of the world

This may just be the most accurate map of Earth that you've ever seen. It won't look familiar, though.

Japanese architect Hajime Narukawa has divided the world into nearly 100 triangles to form this unique view, and believes it overcomes a 447-year-old problem which you've probably never heard of, yet has plagued every map you'll have ever seen.

The traditional world map, known as the Mercator map, is considered highly inaccurate due to huge distortions in the size of Antarctica and Greenland - caused by trying to flatten a spherical globe.

AUTHAGRAPH The map was made by dividing the globe into 96 regions and transferring the dimensions to a tetrahedron.

Narukawa's "AuthaGraph World Map" divides the globe into 96 triangles which are then flattened and transferred to a tetrahedron. That allows the world map to be "unfolded" into a rectangle while still maintaining the proportions of countries.



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WHY IS ANTARCTICA OFF SOUTH AMERICA, BUT NOT BELOW NZ?

Narukawa's map does have one obvious limitation: as Popular Mechanics puts it, his map "doesn't align to the cardinal directions" - that's north, east, south and west to the rest of us.

As a result, one version of Narukawa's AuthaGraph World Map shows Antarctica underneath South America, and far to the right of New Zealand.

DANIEL R STREBE In a Mercator projection, area sizes become increasingly distorted the further they are from the equator.

That could be remedied, at least partly, by choosing a different frame of the map, which would show Antarctica to south of Aotearoa.

What the AuthaGraph map does do, according to the company's website is: "Represent(s) all oceans, continents including Antarctica which has been neglected in many existing maps in substantially proper sizes. These fit in a rectangular frame without interruptions and overlaps."

The Mercator map, drawn up by Gerardus Mercator almost 450 years ago, was a tool for navigation. While it fulfils that job well - it allowed navigators to plot a straight-line course across the sea - it was not meant for anything else.

To help sailors navigate the oceans, Mercator turned the meridians - lines of longitude - into parallel lines, rather than the converging lines of the globe.

That means his map shows the world getting wider than it really is the further a place is from the equator.

That's not all Mercator did. To enable a course plotted on his map to stay true on the water, he also increased proportionally the distance between the lines of latitude around the world.

DISTORTIONS OF THE MERCATOR MAP:

* Greenland appears larger than Africa, when in reality Africa is 14 times larger and Greenland is really only about the size of Brazil,

* Alaska takes up as much area as Brazil, which is nearly five times bigger,

* Scandinavia appears to be larger than India, although India is three times the size of all Scandinavian countries put together,

* And while Russia is big, it's nowhere as extensive as the Mercator projection would suggest.

New Zealand Cartographic Society president Igor Drecki said the AuthaGraph map was "stunning and innovative, visually engaging and probably deserving of recognition".

All map projections introduced error, some smaller and some greater. The trick was to use the right projection for the purpose involved, Drecki said.

"The novelty of the AuthaGraph map is, in addition to a stunning design, an introduction of 96 triangles for which map projection was applied individually. Resulting 'flat' maps were then 'stitched' together into a seamless map.

"It is unclear to me, without an in-depth study, which characteristics (area, distance, angle) have been retained for these individual tiles, but I suspect none. The shape of Australia, India or Brazil suggests that these individual projections were probably compromises applied to retain the 'right appearance' of the world."

AN AWARD-WINNING MAP:

The judges of Japan's prestigious Good Design Award were impressed, choosing the AuthaGraph map for its 2016 grand award.

The outline of the AuthaGraph entry on the award website said the mapping method could transfer a spherical surface to a rectangular surface, while maintaining correct proportions in areas.

"AuthaGraph faithfully represents all oceans, continents including the neglected Antarctica," the website said.

It did have one qualification. The map needed a further step, increasing the number of subdivisions, to improve its accuracy to be officially called an "area-equal map".

As described by Popular Mechanics, the key to creating the new map was dividing the globe into 96 equal regions and then transferring the dimensions from a sphere to a tetrahedron before generating the rectangular map.

"By using multiple steps to change the globe from a rounded sphere to an angular pyramid and finally to a flat map, the area ratios of land and water can be preserved."

The proportions are so accurate the map can be folded up into a three-dimensional globe. Also, different world maps can be put together from the AuthaGraph images, making it possible to make maps with anywhere in the world at the centre.

NOT A NEW ISSUE:

The Mercator map was also in the firing line on season two of US political drama, The West Wing.

In the episode, White House press secretary CJ Cregg meets with the Organization of Cartographers for Social Equality - a group pushing for the president to ditch the Mercator map and adopt the inverted Peters Projection map.

Cregg probably channelled the audience's thoughts when she asked "what the hell is that", upon seeing the "real" map.

"Why it's where you've been living this whole time," she's told.