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.

Throughout time, mapping the Earth hasn’t simply been an effort to accurately model the planet, but to define reality. Behind the great cartographers have stood monarchs, republics, emperors, ...

Walk into any school classroom and you will likely see a flat, rectangular map of the world sprawled across the wall. Generations of children have grown up learning that this projection is what Earth ...