Posted by EarthSky Voices in Earth | Human World | February 25, 2021 You know the old problem of how to portray the round globe of Earth on a flat map? Now a trio of map experts has worked together to solve this problem. Their new map is 2-sided and round. By Liz Fuller-Wright, Princeton University Office of Communications How do you flatten a sphere? For centuries, mapmakers have agonized over how to accurately display our round planet on anything other than a globe. Now, a fundamental re-imagining of how maps can work has resulted in what might be the most accurate flat map ever made, from a trio of map experts: Princeton astrophysicist J. Richard Gott; Robert Vanderbei, a Princeton professor of operations research and financial engineering who created the “Purple America” map of election results; and Drexel University astrophysicist David Goldberg.