The closest a tropical storm or hurricane has ever come to crossing the equator was Typhoon Vamei in December 2001 in the western Pacific, which got within 100 miles of the equator, forming at ...

Every map of the world that you have ever seen is inaccurate. Well, of course, you might think. How could they map out the world when it’s round, not flat?

Here's why flat world maps always have distortions. Skip to main ... is not flat — it is technically an oblate spheroid — a sphere with a flattened top and bottom and a bulge along the equator.

When many people picture a map of the world, what they're probably thinking of is a Mercator projection, a representation that despite its apparent distortions has been around more than 400 years.

This article was originally published on Nov. 3, 2016. Our maps have been lying to us for centuries. The standard classroom maps we all learned geography from are based on the Mercator projection, a ...

The Equator is a line of latitude that bisects the globe at its widest point, and where the hours of light and darkness are equal throughout the year. The Equator passes through 13 countries ...

Researchers at Ghent University in Belgium have etched a tiny world map–on a scale of 1 trillion—on to a optical silicon chip. They reduced the earth’s 25,000-mile circumference at the ...

According to the Institute, the map’s importance transcends geography however, its shape forcing us to conceive the world in a different way, a way not delineated as East and West.

The first thing to keep in mind is that ocean currents are very thin compared to the diameter of Earth. They’re only about four kilometers (13,000 feet) deep at most, and surface currents can be just ...

US schools to get new world map after 500 years of 'colonial' distortion. ... There is no distortion at the equator, but sizes gradually increase the further you get towards the poles.