>>15910938This.
The 2D maps you see of the earth are a spherical topology of the surface of the earth stretched and distorted in order to fit a 2D plane. You cannot map a sphere to a 2D flat plane without some form of distortion in the coordinates.
That distortion makes Africa look a lot smaller than it really is on a 2D map, Africa in reality is far bigger than you realise from 2D maps, see pic related.
That same effect is what causes plane routes on 2D maps to not be straight lines between airports, the shortest path on a 2D map between 2 points is not a straight line.
