# Are the Arctic and Antarctica mostly unmapped by Google earth?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-arctic-and-antarctica-mostly-unmapped-by-google-earth/595565>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 8, 2011, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-arctic-and-antarctica-mostly-unmapped-by-google-earth/595565 "2011-09-08T01:12:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\
**Post date:** [September 12, 2011, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-arctic-and-antarctica-mostly-unmapped-by-google-earth/595565/21 "2011-09-12T08:06:28Z")

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> [@Chronos](#):
>
> I’m not sure what that means. Does that just mean that the globe is normalized to a sphere before the Mercator projection is applied?

Well, yes, according to the articles I linked to. For example:

> [@OpenLayers](#):
>
> This term is used to refer to the fact that these providers use a Mercator projection which treats the earth as a sphere, rather than a projection which treats the earth as an ellipsoid. This affects calculations done based on treating the map as a flat plane, and is therefore important to be aware of when working with these map providers.

It’s actually a bit more complicated than that (or a lot more complicated, if you’re trying to use out-of-the-box mapping tools to work with the data); read the discussion on the third link for all the niggling details.

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