Londoners often think that London is the centre of the world, and maybe even the universe. But traditional cartography draws the world with the north and south poles at the top and bottom of the world map, and with the equator running along the centre line.
We can use the power of modern mapping software to solve this problem, and put London in the geographical centre of the world. This is done by re-defining the latitude and longtitude of all the points on the earth's surface, so that the new latitude of London is zero degrees, whilst preserving its zero longtitude because the Greenwich meridian remains fixed. In the traditional co-ordinate scheme, London is at 51.48°N, 0.00°E. Now London has new co-ordinates 0.00°N, 0.00°E. The old North pole is now located at 38.52°N, 0.00°E. The new North pole is now located a bit north of Hawaii, and the new South pole is south-west of Cape Town.
We can see the new London-centric map of the world:
Other than the re-parameterisation of latitude and longtitude, this is a standard projection. It is the Equidistant Cylindrical projection (Plate Caree), under which the (new) lines of latitude and longtitude are straight lines at right angles to each other.
Interesting features of the new map are that Australia and New Zealand are now in the northern hemisphere, the relative sizes of Greenland, the Arctic Sea and Antartica are more realistic, and that Newfoundland is a lot closer to London than New York is.
Also available:
You can compare the new map with the existing (or "classic") representation, also shown on the same Equidistant Cylindrical projection:
I thoroughly recommend The Geospatial Desktop (2012) by Gary Sherman as an invaluable guide to the QGIS geographic mapping software, and also as the source for the original world map of country borders used here.
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