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Article: No.004 A new map for a new world.(THE ILLUMINATED EARTH)
- Article from:
- Esquire
- Article date:
- October 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Hearst Communications, reprinted with permission of Hearst. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In recent years, projection and satellite cartography have improved our understanding of the political and commercial geography of the earth. Yet even the most modern maps offer little more than a two-dimensional representation of the world, the location of borders and mountains and roads. What's missing is information about the world beyond the topography: the way people and nations function in relation to one another.
Building upon an algorithm originally designed in 2004 by physicists Michael Gastner and Mark Newman at the University of Michigan to measure gas diffusion and heat transfer (for another application of their mapping technique, see page 213), the ...