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I'm sorry for posting a classic "shallow dismissal"... but this press-release speaks breathlessly of revolution when similar hemispherical-type projections have been around for ages. And it doesn't mention the major downside: it may minimize the metrics, but it's not great for where most people in the world actually live! It does seem interesting for a set of front/back disks of the Solar System, but that's a pretty different use case than for general geography. Okay, now I'm ready to have my shallow opinion corrected by an expert opinion :) but I could not help but take umbrage at what appears to be a submarine piece of folks trying to sell this to educational materials publishing houses.

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Completely agree - when trying to use a map to understand things about the world that humans care about (the normal use-case of world maps!), it helps to have the places-where-things-that-humans-care-about easily visible and differentiable.

On the other hand, humans care a lot about climate change and this affects the poles a great deal, and maybe a projection that centers the poles like this can help make these regions of the world more visible.

It's a world map. If you want a local map then this doesn't apply. I'm not sure what your point is "where people live".

I happen to originate from a different country than where I currently reside and on this map, the path that the plane takes makes a whole lot more sense. It seems to be a much better model of the world, to get better, you'd need a 3D globe.

Where people live just meant that choosing to distort the equator. This does not seem like a useful map to use if you are interested in Africa or South Asia! It's a tradeoff for all projections.

However, I don't want to go too hard on these guys. Reading the arXiv paper, I think it's clear that they wanted to make a cool set of disks for the Solar System. They actually look really cool for Jupiter and Saturn with their equatorial cloud bands and polar vortices! And centering on the poles gives a nice symmetry with the Earth and Mars with the ice caps.

They also show the version of Earth with the projection centered on the Western and Eastern hemispheres and the distortions are a lot more obvious (e.g., Alaska, Canada, and Australia are pretty bad). I can see why they like the North/South pole version.

I think they're talking specifically about printed maps. I'm not sure the hemispheres have been printed back to back like this.

This feature of the map seemed particularly unique:

"To measure distances from one side to the other, you can use string or measuring tape reaching from one side of the disk to the other, he suggested."

Hemispheres have definitely been printed back-to-back before.

I think the key idea of using both sides of the paper or whatever is a notable one, if over-promoted here. It has certainly gotten me thinking about how to improve on it. Maybe something origami-based where you can flip between surfaces with different hemispherical projections.

I really like the Fuller/Dymaxion map for this. It limits the distortion and you can "rebuild" the earth by folding the map back into an Icosahedron. (It is displayed in the article)

What do you mean by "breathlessly"? This sounds like an insult, but I can't identify the tone in the article that you're criticizing.

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