Take
a look at a map today, and you might think North America is larger than
Africa or Greenland is larger than Mexico and China.
But that's not true in the slightest.
Mercator's World Map of 1569 - responsible for some of the greatest misunderstandings in cartography. This is why Greenland looks the size of Africa on Google Maps.
The issue derives from trying to represent a three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional surface.
Luckily for everyone, Google is solving this problem with the latest update to Google Maps.
Google announced Thursday it will begin showing the Earth as a globe rather than a flat "mercator projection" as it formerly had.
The result is that when you zoom out all the way in Google Maps, you'll now see a view of the globe from space, rather than the flat map that was previously shown.
What's best about this update is that it's coming to all desktop users regardless of the respective web browser, thanks to the global Web GL standard.
While this does confirm that Google Maps is not part of the flat earth movement, it also speaks to the importance and impact of the company's other mapping service Google Earth.
The latter has always presented the world in 3D and is used more for storytelling, exploration, and of course education.
Earth is limited to Google Chrome and as it uses a proprietary 3D rendering engine based on Native Client software that is exclusive to the browser.
Google Maps announced the change on Twitter and wasn't shy about the flattening issue fix.
In the announcement, the company notes that Greenland, which is 836,300 square miles, is no longer the size of Africa which is 11.73 million square miles.
The reason these two land masses look relative in size on a 2D map is to compensate for the circular shape of the Earth, which stretches the countries out.
The sizing of Greenland and Africa is now improved The mobile version of Google Maps, both the apps and the website, still
show the world as a plane. Google Maps was first released more than 13
years ago — hopefully, it won’t take another 13 before Google Maps
mobile gets the 3D globe treatment.
Truthfully, Greenland is quite small in comparison to Africa, both in real life and now depicted correctly on this 3D Globe.
However, Google Maps has not been the only one struggling with this. Apple Maps is currently still showing a flat view of the world.
Mercator vs Globe with OpenLayers API
For what it's worth, even maps in school do this.
Thinking back to my elementary school days, I can clearly remember looking at the oval-shaped map being pulled down from above the chalkboard.
Making accurate maps is mathematically impossible Any discussion of spherical map projections is complicated by the fact that the Earth is not a sphere... The centrifugal force of the Earth’s rotation pushes it out into more of an ellipsoid that’s about 0.335% fatter at the equator than at the poles (the actual shape is even more complicated)
Billionaire Yacht Tracker : A Year of Sailing A Forbes exclusive look at the travels of the Billionaire Yacht Club. The Forbes interactive map shows the tracks of 17 of the most expensive privately owned yachts over the course of one whole year. You can select to view the year's track of individual yachts by vessel name. If you select an individual yacht on the map you can view the owner's name and details on the distance traveled and the locations where the yacht spent the most time. The 'Destinations' button on the map allows you to view a heat-map view of the locations most visited by the super-rich. he Mediterranean and the Caribbean are two of the most popular locations. If you scroll down past the map then you can read some pen portraits of the boats' owners and a brief summary of where their yacht's traveled in 2017.
There are more ‘explorer’ super-yachts being built than ever before as adventurous billionaires seek out ‘the rarest of experiences’
News this week that the super-rich are kitting their yachts out to polar explorer standards has been greeted with joy by Inuits, who have never before encountered a PayPal co-founder in the wild.
“We absolutely recognize this trend,” says Stewart Campbell, the editor of Boat International.
“There are more ‘explorer’ super-yachts in build now than at any time before.”
Stronger hulls, bigger fuel tanks and ecological waste units make up the core of the new-look mega-boats.
Campbell points to Project REV, being built by the Norwegian industrialist Kjell Inge Røkke – a research station-cum-super-yacht due to span 182 metres when completed in 2020.
Aston Martin has unveiled its own submarine – yours for $4m (£3m) – while the London broker Edmiston is selling a yacht called Kilkea with an “ice-class hull” that can move through uncharted waters for 30 days without restocking – £55m and we’ll call it a deal.
While Monaco has its cachet, remoteness is now a status symbol in itself.
Remoteness costs.
It’s space that few but the Elon Musks and Richard Bransons can afford.
But anyone with a spare £100m can tack south from Tierra del Fuego.
“It’s just about adventure,” says Campbell.
“There’s a growing desire from ultra high net worth individuals to get to untouched places and have the rarest of experiences.”
Superyachts
Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, seems to have kickstarted the boom back in 2003, with his Octopus, which is presently moored in London.
The Octopus, which costs $384,000 a week to run, is sturdy enough that, in 2015, he used it to find a second world war battleship off the coast of the Philippines.
The 107-meter explorer previously known as Ulysses built for Graeme Hart, whose net worth is valued at $10.2 billion by Forbes has now been renamed to Andromeda and sold to a US-based individual involved in tech according some rumors.
This comes as a new 116-meter Ulysses is set to be handed over to her owner soon after under going interior fittings.
The yacht was the largest brokerage deal of 2017 when it was sold at an asking price of $165 million.
Those who don’t find the sight of a billionaire on a quest for inner peace in oceanic solitude offputting will be heartened by the owners’ belief in the extreme robustness of their super-yachts.
In St Tropez daily rate at anchorage of 1 large yacht : between 3127 € and 4100 € /day
Privatising your own emergency rescue?
Now that’s the .0001% mindset.
And 'in the same time', Le Canard enchaîné newspaper revealed in 2017 that mine-clearing divers from the French Navy helped Bernard Arnault find a new anchorage for his US$ 150M yacht, the Symphony.
Is this the Tesla of the seas?
Silent zero-emission electric motorboat has a range of 80 nautical miles and is controlled using an iPad
The 30-foot craft is powered by a 'completely silent' propulsion system and zero-emissions electric motor.
It has a range of 80 nautical miles and can seat up to eight people and includes a spacious interior
Q-Yachts, based in Helsinki, describes the vessels as the 'smoothest and most silent motorboat on the market'
The company has yet to reveal the price of the boat and when it will be available to purchase
The 30-foot (9-metre) Q30 craft, built by Finnish firm Q-Yachts, is powered by a 'completely silent' propulsion system and has an electric motor that produces no emissions.
It has a range of 80 nautical miles (92 miles/148km) and can seat up to eight people, with a roomy below-deck cabin providing space for a small sink, additional seating and storage closets.
Q-Yachts describes the vessel as the 'smoothest and most silent motorboat on the market', but has yet to reveal the vessel's price or release date.
An all-electric motorboat that you can control with an iPad has been described as the 'Tesla of the seas'. The 30-foot (9-metre) craft, built by Finnish firm Q-Yachts, is powered by a 'completely silent' propulsion system and zero-emissions electric motor
The company, which is based in Helsinki, said the craft was designed so sailors could 'enjoy the journey, not just the destination'.
'We are positioning ourselves as the Tesla of the seas,' Q-Yachts sales director Joakim Hilden told SuperYachtNews.
'Even compared to Tesla, our electrical propulsion system is far more robust and rugged than when they launched their first cars.'
The engine of the Q30: The vessel is propelled by an all-electric
system called 'Oceanvolt' that has previously been used as an
alternative power source for sailboats.
The basic battery pack
facilitates five hours of constant cruising, a figure which doubles with
an additional battery pack
Dubbed the Q30, the vessel is propelled by an all-electric system called 'Oceanvolt' that has previously been used as an alternative power source for sailboats.
The propulsion system is low-voltage, meaning it operates at a relatively small revolutions-per-minute, making it quieter than conventional engines, Mr Hilden said.
The motor's shaft also goes directly into the engine, meaning there is no gearbox, a design feature that further reduces noise levels.
Take a look at the all-electric 'Tesla of the seas' motorboat
Q-Yachts describes the vessels as the 'smoothest and most silent
motorboat on the market', but has yet to reveal a price and release date An all-electric motorboat that you can control with an iPad has been described as the 'Tesla of the seas'.
What are the specs of the Q-Yacht Q30 ?
Cruising speed: 9 knots (10mph/17kph)
Top speed: 15 knots (17mph/28kph)
Range: 80 nautical miles (92 miles/148km)
Length: 30ft (9m)
Propulsion system: All-electric silent motor system 'Oceanvolt'
Price/availability: TBC
An iPad nestled behind the wooden steering wheel controls navigation via
an interactive map,
as well as interior and exterior LED lights
The boat has a range of 80 nautical miles (92 miles/148km) and can seat
up to eight people, with a roomy below-deck cabin (pictured) providing
space for a small sink, seating and storage closets
While the engine system provides a quiet ride, it limits the boat's range and top speed, hitting just 15 knots (17mph/28kph) at its peak.
The Q30 can cover 80 nautical miles at its cruising speed of 9 knots (10mph/17kph) but this drops to just 40 nautical miles (46 miles74km) at top speed.
The basic battery pack allows for five hours of constant cruising, a figure that can be doubled with the addition of an extra pack.
Passengers can enjoy a two-person sunbathing platform or four-seat table up top, as well as a cosy below-deck lounge and hi-fi audio from a wireless Bluetooth speaker.
Dubbed the Q30, the vessel is propelled by an all-electric silent motor system called 'Oceanvolt' that has previously been used as an alternative power source for sailboats.
The propulsion system is low-voltage, meaning it operates at a relatively small revolutions-per-minute, making it quieter than conventional engines
While the engine system provides a quiet ride, it limits the boat's
range and top speed, hitting just 15 knots (17mph/28kph) at its peak.
The Q30 can cover 80 nautical miles at its cruising speed of 9 knots
(10mph/17kph) - a figure that drops to just 40 nautical miles (46
miles74km) at top speed
The vessel's hull and deck are made of a lightweight vinyl ester resin and fiberglass that has been laminated with a shimmering white gelcoat.
Its shape has been designed to minimise the wake the vessel produces as it cuts through the water in an effort to further minimise noise.
An iPad nestled behind the wooden steering wheel controls navigation in the form of an interactive map, as well as interior and exterior LED lights.
Passengers can enjoy a two-person sunbathing platform or four-seat table up top, as well as a cosy below-deck lounge and hi-fi audio from a wireless Bluetooth speaker.
The vessel's hull and deck are made of a lightweight vinyl ester resin and fiberglass that has been laminated with a shimmering white gelcoat
The Q30's shape has been designed to minimise the wake the vessel
produces as it cuts through the water in an effort to further minimise
noise
The basic battery pack allows for five hours of constant cruising, a figure that can be doubled with the addition of an extra battery pack
It was a wow! moment. The world's biggest berg, a block of ice a quarter the size of Wales, fell off the Antarctic exactly a year ago. But what then? We've gone back to find out.
Weighing a trillion tonnes and covering an area of nearly 6,000 sq km, the colossus dubbed A-68 has kind of spent the past 12 months shuffling on the spot - rather like a driver trying to get themselves out of a tight parking spot at the supermarket.
Occasionally, the berg head-butted the floating shelf of ice from which it calved, but made only limited progress in moving north - its expected path out of the Antarctic's Weddell Sea towards the Atlantic Ocean.
Iceberg A68 in Antarctica, seen on 6th Jan by Sentinel3.
A68 is slowly moving away from the Larsen-C ice shelf.
Plenty of cracks visible on the surface of the 'berg, wonder how long it'll last before breaking up.
"An iceberg as massive as A-68 is sluggish, and thus needs time to accelerate," explains Thomas Rackow from Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute.
"Compared to much smaller icebergs, A-68 is also less sensitive to offshore winds that could potentially drive the iceberg away from the continent.
In fact, since the calving event in early July last year, we could see the iceberg going back and forth due to the prevailing winds."
Dr Rackow says the frozen ocean surface probably also played some role in constraining the berg's movement, and wonders if the underside of the berg was catching on the seafloor.
It's a thought shared by Suzanne Bevan at Swansea University, UK.
"We know so little about the bathymetry (depth) in that area of the Weddell Sea," she told BBC News.
Given time, though, A-68 should pick up the pace as the currents grab hold of it.
And A-68 hasn't melted?
Nope.
It's extremely cold in that part of the world.
The berg has knocked off some of its sharp edges, but it remains much as it was - 150km long and 55km wide.
Two largish chunks have detached, one of them sufficiently big to get its own designation (A-68b) in the list of giant bergs kept by the US National Ice Center.
The American agency has officially now put A-68 at number six in its all-time ranking.
If you were wondering - a berg called B15 is the historic champ.
It was roughly 11,000 sq km in area when it broke away from Antarctica back in 2000.
And it's still going, albeit in pieces.
Astronauts on the space station recently photographed the largest remaining fragment of B15 passing the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia on its way to the equator.
A-68 will very probably travel this same "iceberg alley".
Eighteen years on, B-15 is now a shadow of its former self
What's A-68 like if you go there?
Ella Gilbert from the British Antarctic Survey was the first to make a movie of the berg from close quarters.
The scientist was in a small plane gathering atmospheric data when she made a low pass along its edge.
"It took us an hour and a half to go from one side to the other," she says.
"It's scale is mind-boggling, fascinating - it's like another world.
It was possibly the most exciting thing I've ever done."
Ella is often asked why the berg broke away.
"It's complicated," she explains.
"The region is clearly undergoing a lot of change but you can't just say 'it was the climate'.
Iceberg calving is a natural process anyway.
If you put more snow in at one end, it has to come out the other end as icebergs."
Ultimately, it's expected A-68 will enter "iceberg alley" into the Atlantic
So, why should we be interested?
A-68 broke away from the Larsen C Ice Shelf - the floating extension of glaciers running off the Antarctic Peninsula.
The shelf is the subject of intense scrutiny because similar structures to the north have disintegrated.
Climate warming very probably was implicated in some of these losses, and so it is inevitable that people will ask what the future holds for Larsen C.
It is one of the biggest ice shelves in all of Antarctica and its collapse would allow its feeding glaciers to dump more of their ice into the ocean, raising sea-levels.
How likely is that to happen?
The answer to this question will only come with ongoing monitoring.
The first thing scientists want to understand is how the shelf will react to calving such a big berg.
The stresses acting on the shelf will almost certainly have changed.
"The models tell us we should expect the centre of the Larsen C Ice Shelf to speed up a bit, and the edges, where the berg was attached, to slow down," says Swansea's Adrian Luckman, whose Midas research group was most closely involved in monitoring A-68's break-away.
But this behaviour is very difficult to demonstrate because tidal movements push on the shelf and complicate the satellite measurements.
Weather station and satellite observations have established that a particular type of warm westerly wind, or Foehn, will flow down off the peninsula mountains to produce ponds on the surface of the shelf.
"You see this in May, which in the Antarctic is equivalent to late November.
Forty percent of the melt in 2016 occurred in this winter period - all because of the Foehn effect," says Adrian Luckman.
This is a process scientists will need to watch closely.
Some of those northern shelves that collapsed were destabilised by the presence of large numbers of meltwater lakes on their surface.
Larsen C is far from replicating such conditions but that may change in the coming decades if global warming progresses as expected and its effects impinge deeper into the Antarctic.
Six different satellite scatterometers are used to track icebergs around Antarctica.
The image shows iceberg tracks from 1999 to 2010.
The drift paths (red lines) of countless bergs have been tracked around the Antarctic continent (black).
This collective history strongly suggests A-68 will head for the South Atlantic
New research arried out in June 2018 to try to find the Cordelière, a flagship of the Franco-Breton fleet, missing at sea, during a battle against the English in 1512... !
500 years later, maritime history enthusiasts, in partnership with the Brittany region, still hope to find the wreck of this ship off Brest.
The spirit of famed French explorer Jacques Cousteau lives on in a mission to find the wrecks of two warships, one French and one English, that sank 500 years ago off the Brittany port of Brest.
Instead of Cousteau's old minesweeper Calypso, it is the French culture ministry's surveillance ship André Malraux and its doughty crew of scientists and divers.
André Malraux, DRASSM research vessel deploying various electronic detection means on the survey area necessary to characterize anomalies likely to indicate the wrecks sought.
Frédéric Osada / Images Explorations/ DRASSM
Today's adventure: to locate, excavate and eventually raise the wrecks of the Cordelière and the Regent - two behemoths of the Tudor seas that sank together in the Battle of Saint-Mathieu in 1512.
And filling the Cousteau role is Michel L'Hour, marine archaeologist extraordinaire and veteran of a thousand missions to explore France's underwater heritage.
"I have been obsessed with finding these ships for 40 years," he says, ruddy-faced and bearded like any proper sea-dog.
"I am not so young any more, and I think this may be my last mission.
If I can locate the ships, then leave them to my colleagues to excavate, I will be a happy man."
After initial unsuccessful searches between 1996 and 2001, a new three-week campaign will therefore begin around 20 June in an area of 25 km2 between the 'goulet de Brest' and Point Saint-Mathieu, in waters up to 40 metres deep.
visualization of the area with the GeoGarage platform (SHOM chart)
How the two ships were sunk
For the French, or rather for the people of Brittany, the Cordelière has mythic status.
She was the flagship of the duchy's last independent ruler and revered heroine, the Duchess Anne.
And she was captained up until the moment of sinking (and his death) by another Breton hero, Hervé de Portzmoguer, a kind of patriot-corsair.
His Frenchified name Primauguet is still given to vessels of the French navy to this day.
But the English have a hand in this tale too.
The André Malraux's crew scour the ocean floor with remote-controlled vehicles
The Regent was, in its day, every bit as important as its sister ship the Mary Rose, which was famously raised from the Solent 36 years ago and is now on display in Portsmouth.
If anything, the Regent was the bigger ship.
And if Henry VIII's Mary Rose is anything to go by, then this would be a stupendous find indeed.
The trouble is no-one knows exactly where the Battle of Saint-Mathieu took place.
It was during one of the lesser-known wars between England and an alliance of France and a still-independent Brittany.
Hundreds died as the two ships caught fire and went down together Contemporary picture of the Breton Marie-la-Cordelièreand the English Regent flagships ablaze. The Cordelière flies the Kroaz Du, whilst the Regent flies St. George's Cross
On 10 August 1512, the Franco-Breton fleet was at anchor off Brest when it sighted the approaching English.
Most of the French ships made haste to get to safety through the mouth of the inner bay of Brest, a passage known as the goulet.
But the Cordelière and two other ships stayed to fight off the attack.
Brest Museum
The Regent bore down on the Cordelière and for two or three hours there was close-quarters fighting.
But then, and no-one knows why, it all ended with a massive explosion.
The two ships, entangled in battle, sank together to the bottom.
Hundreds died.
The simultaneous destruction of the Cordelière and the Regent
depicted by Pierre-Julien Gilbert
Out there, somewhere
With backing from the French government, the Brittany region, universities and industry, Michel L'Hour has assembled a multidisciplinary team to find what he knows must be down there somewhere.
Tides and currents have been recalculated.
Previous efforts had failed to spot that the calendar changed in 1582.
Naval charts of the sea floor have been re-examined.
Historians are looking through the few contemporary accounts of the battle, and the search is on for clues from parish and other archives.
Christophe Cerino, of Brittany-South University, says diplomatic records in the UK will be a particular focus.
"We know that several hundred Englishmen were on the Regent, and many were of noble families.
After the battle their bodies will have washed up somewhere on the coast and been given burial," he says.
Research is based on the scant records available and the team is searching for more
"Somewhere in the archives there are bound to be requests from noble families asking for the repatriation of these bodies.
Those requests will contain names of places and parishes.
"Knowing where the bodies washed up, and the state of the currents, we may get a clearer picture where the battle took place."
Close, but no warship
For now Mr L'Hour is working on the theory that the French fleet was anchored near the goulet on the southern side of the outer bay, near the village of Camaret-sur-Mer.
This is based on a contemporary report that it was sheltering from a southerly wind, or auster.
The battle, he thinks, must have taken place in waters to the north of Camaret.
So that is where the André Malraux is now in a back-and-forth combing operation, dragging an array of sonar and magnetic detectors.
An undersea robot sends back video, and divers are ready to explore any find.
Michel L'Hour (director of DRASSM) Olivia Hulot, co-director of the Cordelière Project, Philippe Alain, product manager engineer at IXBlue, a partner in the project, and Luc Jaulin, professor of robotics at the ENSTA-Bretagne engineering school, facing control screens during the acquisition of prospecting data.
Photo credit: Frédéric Osada / Images Explorations/ DRASSM
Video footage from the unmanned vehicles is pored over by the team back in the control room
In the operations room, the Cousteau-esque motif holds truer than ever, as the faithful team in identical Cordelière T-shirts (many have been with Michel L'Hour for years) pore over the incoming video and puzzle over recovered pieces of ceramic.
In fact, within the first days there has already been an interesting discovery.
A wreck has been located that is in the right zone.
It is big, and Mr L'Hour can tell from its clinker-built construction (with overlapping planks) that it is from the 15th or 16th Century.
At one point it even looks like there might be two wrecks lying together, which would be a clincher.
A fascinating discovery - but not the one the team was hunting for
But, alas, doubts set in.
If this is a warship, where are the cannon?
There are apparently none, which means it is probably only a commercial ship.
An important find, but not the one they were looking for.
Michel L'Hour is convinced that with all the technology now available the wrecks of the Cordelière and the Regent will eventually be found.
And afterwards who knows?
The dream is of a museum in Brest.
As for the Cousteau comparison, Mr L'Hour - who knew him - is bemused.
"You know that Cousteau was a hopeless archaeologist.
At one of his excavations in the Mediterranean, he completely failed to spot that he was dealing with not one shipwreck but two, one lying on top of the other.
"It was because of the mess he made, that the ministry created our outfit - the first ever government-funded undersea archaeological survey ship.
"But the team, the camaraderie, the seamanship - that I would be proud to share."
