Here’s a curious image.
I’m not sure I recall where I found the site on which I built that, but, what it allowed me to do is drag countries around to see their relative sizes. (Alaska is rotated to bolt to the US.)
I lined all the biggest along the equator, from largest on down. You’ll notice that those countries managed to fit along the equator just as you see — end to end — all the way around. Now, wouldn’t that be a curious world to live upon; with seas between each of nine continents, and oceans above and below and of course all of the remaining 190 odd countries stuck to the tops and bottoms of those nine (lots of Africa and South America to distribute.) But the tops and bottoms all being oceans — just two of them.
An interesting adjunct to this sequence would be to compare the populations for these countries, given their general shapes, and line them up according to that metric. Hmm, I may have to do exactly that (I’ll hunt around). (Of course there would be countries that show up here that are not shown, vis-a-vis population rank.
I’m struck by the comparatively equivalent sizes of Canada, USA, China, Brazil and Australia. Within 20-30%, they’re about the same land mass.
Just imagine if we could terraform Earth to look like this? Before we terraform Mars, maybe we should consider doing something about living on what we’re not using already…
Anonymole - apocryphal agitators 
You’d have to consider how much of each of those is relatively uninhabitable. Parts of Russia, China and Canada would require one if those moon dome things to make it tolerable. If they were all equatorial, yeah, coconuts and grass skirts all around but the arctic tundra, Siberia? Forget that.
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Yeah, true. But stretched around the equator – we’d all be lazy SOBs then. There’s a reason why the most industrious countries are above/below the 30th parallel. Winter provides a major incentive. This ties in with many of my Fermi Paradox theories.
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Yeah, true. But stretched around the equator – we’d all be lazy SOBs then.
And your point is?
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No point. You’re right to call that statement out. Why not have all of us live a life of tropical leisure? I retract the sentiment. Where do I sign up?
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Why did I think China encompassed so much more land than that? Thank you for aligning my perspective with fact. I need to brush up on some geography.
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The Mercator world map (the one we’re all used to) distorts our perspective. Yes, I underwent the same realization. The bottom line is, we have no accurate way to understand geographical size. Peel an orange, and flatten the skin, You can get close, but distortions abound.
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Hi AMole,
When Sudan was just the Sudan and not north and south, it measured about 2.4 million sq kilometers. Texas would fit nicely into the Sudan four times. Also, during the summer Texas actually becomes the largest state in the union due to the ice melting up in Alaska. Not many people know this second amazing fact. About distance and traveling, I always say that when pain and time become the same, than the moment of arrival is at hand. Africa is a beast. Few have traveled overland from one end to the other. It is an accomplishment even with today’s roads. The Mercator Map always seemed a political motivated sort of map to me. Yes there are mathematical/physical reasons for the map, but it workout nicely for Americans and Europeans to project their countries as being big while developing world countries appeared smaller than what they really were. If nothing else, economics teach us that perception and expectations are everything. Thanks. Duke
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Excellent points.
Pain and time, I like that, and can immediately identify with it. “I’m tired, cramped, dirty and ornery; I’ve been on the road for three days.” — well good, because, you’re here.
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We also need to delete all the shithole countries, according to some.
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That, or we take the one shithead in chief, and flush him in parts down the gullets of a thousand hagfish.
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I like that better!
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