Surely, many of you have wondered, looking at the world map, why Greenland is an island, and Australia, which is not much larger than it, has the status of a continent? Let's look at why such a blatant injustice against Greenland has arisen.
The fact is that when we look at a world map, for example, a political one, it seems to us that Greenland, if not equal in area to Australia, then at least not so different from it. But this is a delusion. In fact, the area of Australia, together with the island of Tasmania, is 7,692,024 km² (without Tasmania 7,623,623 km²), and the area of Greenland is 2,130,800 km², more than three times less. But how is it? After all, they look almost the same, don't they?
The thing is that the map of the world, which depicts the surface of the Earth, actually distorts reality: most common map projections increase the distances at the poles, but the equatorial regions are shown without distortion. Thus, if we are talking about a general map of the world, and not a map of the poles or a map of individual regions, then you should always keep in mind that an accurate image on the surface of the planet is impossible, you always have to sacrifice something. In our case, these are distances at high latitudes, and with them the visual area, which seems many times larger. Therefore, it turns out that Greenland and Australia look almost equal in size, but if you look at the globe, the difference is visible to the naked eye.
So, we figured out that the areas of these two geographical objects are incommensurable - there is a significant difference between them. But this is by no means the main criterion for separating a piece of land into the category of a separate continent. The geological structure of the territory is of the utmost importance.
The continent of Australia is located on a separate lithospheric plate - the Australian. In addition to the actual land area called Australia, it also includes the adjacent ocean areas. At the same time, Greenland belongs to North America not only because of the historically established tradition of division into continents, but also on a geological basis. The territory of Greenland belongs to the North American Plate, which, in addition to it, includes the mainland of North America, the Arctic islands located between Canada and Greenland, as well as the extreme northeastern part of the Eurasian continent. Yes, Eurasia is a continent consisting of several lithospheric plates united by one large land region.
In addition, the originality of the region and the historically established tradition are of great importance for separating into a separate mainland. Australia has its own unique aboriginal population, unlike other regions of the planet, the composition of flora and fauna. While Greenland in these parameters is not much different from Baffin Island, for example, or other nearby islands.
Surely, many of you have wondered, looking at the world map, why Greenland is an island, and Australia, which is not much larger than it, has the status of a continent? Let's look at why such a blatant injustice against Greenland has arisen.
The fact is that when we look at a world map, for example, a political one, it seems to us that Greenland, if not equal in area to Australia, then at least not so different from it. But this is a delusion. In fact, the area of Australia, together with the island of Tasmania, is 7,692,024 km² (without Tasmania 7,623,623 km²), and the area of Greenland is 2,130,800 km², more than three times less. But how is it? After all, they look almost the same, don't they?
The thing is that the map of the world, which depicts the surface of the Earth, actually distorts reality: most common map projections increase the distances at the poles, but the equatorial regions are shown without distortion. Thus, if we are talking about a general map of the world, and not a map of the poles or a map of individual regions, then you should always keep in mind that an accurate image on the surface of the planet is impossible, you always have to sacrifice something. In our case, these are distances at high latitudes, and with them the visual area, which seems many times larger. Therefore, it turns out that Greenland and Australia look almost equal in size, but if you look at the globe, the difference is visible to the naked eye.
So, we figured out that the areas of these two geographical objects are incommensurable - there is a significant difference between them. But this is by no means the main criterion for separating a piece of land into the category of a separate continent. The geological structure of the territory is of the utmost importance.
The continent of Australia is located on a separate lithospheric plate - the Australian. In addition to the actual land area called Australia, it also includes the adjacent ocean areas. At the same time, Greenland belongs to North America not only because of the historically established tradition of division into continents, but also on a geological basis. The territory of Greenland belongs to the North American Plate, which, in addition to it, includes the mainland of North America, the Arctic islands located between Canada and Greenland, as well as the extreme northeastern part of the Eurasian continent. Yes, Eurasia is a continent consisting of several lithospheric plates united by one large land region.
In addition, the originality of the region and the historically established tradition are of great importance for separating into a separate mainland. Australia has its own unique aboriginal population, unlike other regions of the planet, the composition of flora and fauna. While Greenland in these parameters is not much different from Baffin Island, for example, or other nearby islands.
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I have always wondered: why does Greenland look so big on many maps? On some of them, its size exceeds Australia and South America and is even comparable to Africa! At the same time, based on other, non-visual information, there was a feeling that the sizes on the maps were greatly overestimated for some reason. So what's the deal? Frankly, I never thought about it specifically, but I always felt some kind of catch, until, quite by accident, I stumbled upon a simple and logical explanation.
The thing is that the Earth is round (though not perfect). Therefore, if you need to transfer the image of the relief of a spherical surface to a plane, then you will encounter the problem of distortion of the angles between the displayed directions. As a result, the shape of the boundaries of geographical objects can be distorted, and some of them can be changed beyond recognition. We are talking about such objects as continents, seas, oceans, islands, etc. This problem created many difficulties for navigation.
But this was not the case until about 1569, when the Flemish geographer Gerhardus Mercator proposed a new map projection, which later received his name. This is the so-called conformal cylindrical Mercator projection, the essence of which is that it preserves angles between directions. Parallels and meridians are depicted in it using straight lines. But at the same time, for the sake of preserving the angles between directions, the Mercator projection sacrifices another component - the scale.
Indeed, the scale on the map according to the Mercator projection is not constant, but increases from the equator to the poles. Since such a projection has a different scale in different areas, it allows a significant distortion of the area while maintaining the shape of the outlines. So, since the main scale (i.e., without distortion) refers to the equator, then the greatest size distortions will occur for those objects that are located in the region of the poles.
This is why Greenland, located near the North Pole, looks so big on maps using the Mercator projection.
In reality, Greenland is three times smaller than Australia, 8 times smaller than South America and 14 times smaller than Africa!
And here is a visual comparison of Greenland with the size of China. So, for example, Greenland could fit inside China about 4 times.
Approximately according to the same logic, the images of other geographical objects located closer to the North Pole are distorted. For example, this also applies to the visual dimensions of the territory of Eurasia, as well as Russia, which in reality are smaller than they appear on the maps.
Russia is indeed the largest country in terms of territory, but not as large as it seems when looking at the map, where it looks almost twice the size of Africa. If we compare their actual sizes, then everything will turn out to be quite the opposite: Africa is almost twice as large as Russia.
Now there are new, very accurate tools and visualization capabilities, including using 3D models, etc. But many maps printed in books, used in schools, and in services such as Google Maps, still use the Mercator projection imaging method. That is why we so often see relatively large Greenland and relatively small Africa, while in reality these objects have completely different proportions.
Image source: businessinsider.com
Roman Komyza
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