Can you guess the real size of each country on the new world map?

EXPLAINERPick which country is bigger, then watch it morph from Mercator to Equal Earth projection to see how close you were.The map of Africa is much larger than most people think. However, most classroom maps and atlases still understate it – a distortion embedded in the Mercator projection that has shaped world maps for more than four centuries.The distortion in question is not subtle. On a Mercator map, which was designed for European colonial exploration and maritime trade in the 16th century, Greenland appears roughly the size of Africa, which is actually about 14 times larger.The exaggeration increases the farther you travel from the equator, so it falls almost entirely on one half of the world, inflating Europe, including Russia, and North America while shrinking Africa, Latin America and South Asia.To address this, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted 164 to 1 on Friday to adopt a resolution promoting the Equal Earth projection, which shows continents in their true proportions, as an alternative to Mercator.Led by Togo on behalf of the African Group and backed by the African Union, it encourages schools, institutions and tech companies to switch, correcting the shrinking of Africa and other equatorial regions. The African Group is the largest regional voting and dialogue bloc at the UN, consisting of 54 African Union member states.Map quiz: Pick the bigger countrySee it for yourself: pick which country is bigger, then watch it morph from Mercator to Equal Earth to see how close you were.How did countries vote?The United States was the only country to vote against the resolution calling the measure a “radical ideological project”. Serbia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova and Ukraine abstained.