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What you're looking at here is a screenshot from one of the fifty so-called "Spatio-Temporal Exploratory Model" or "STEM" Maps published over on ebird.org — some of the most advanced models of birds' migratory patterns ever released. More »
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Part of the fun of Suzanne Collins' dystopian Hunger Games series is trying to figure out where in North America the districts of the future nation of Panem are located. One Hunger Games fan took a crack at mapping the fictional country, looking not only at information in the book, but also tectonic plate formations and possible ways huge swaths of the continent might flood. More »
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If you're looking for the outline of the Alaska you know and love, you might as well give up now. This bizarre map, which appeared in the third volume of Diderot's Encyclopédie, dates all the way back to 1772 — and it's a total hodgepodge of misinformation. More »
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You're looking at just one print from a collection that comprises dozens of spellbinding maps and charts based on the results of the 1870 US census — the ninth census ever conducted, and the first to be performed in the years following the Civil War. More »
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Such is the scenario Australian designer Cameron Booth has dreamt up in two separate maps depicting both the U.S. Routes system and the U.S. Interstates as massive crisscrossing subway grids. More »
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The original 1956 plan for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system was way more complex on paper than it is in reality. Designer Jake Coolidge has imagined a universe in which this full plan was implemented. And even though it doesn't involve filling in the Bay or underground rocket trains or pyramids, it does complement world-building for any tales about an alternate reality San Francisco rather nicely. More »
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If the Manhattan grid system was extended beyond the island, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom would live at the intersection of 63,709th Street and East 10,894th Avenue. A wild interactive map by Harold Cooper, called ExtendNY, imagines an entire globe laid out according to the New York City grid of the Commissioners' Plan of 1811. More »
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In the 1970s, a remarkable thing was done; a computer was used to solve a math problem. This, in and of itself, was not remarkable. The difference engine could do it. But this problem was the first one that would probably remain unsolved if it weren't for computers. Find out about the Four-Color Theorem, and why it needed to be turned over to the machines, below. More »
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Check out what could be the most detailed map ever made of the lands in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. Covering about 25,000 square miles of Westeros and the lands to the East, this work has over 250 locations, lakes, rivers, towers — and of course The Wall. Behold the splendor! More »
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Book recommendation website Goodreads has noticed that — among the site's American users — those who were most enthusiastic about Twilight hail from the South and the Midwest. Explains the site's blog: More »
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Want to know how to get from New York to London? Set a course 73 degrees east of north and just keep going. Congratulations, you're on the express loxodrome. More »
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Comic fans will remember that the Scarlet Witch went bonkers several years ago and rewrote most of reality on a whim a few times. More »
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If you travel a lot throughout the United States, you might lose track of which menace you should be irrationally paranoid about in each particular state. Is Maine the one with Lobster People, or is that New Hampshire? Now you'll never get confused again, thanks to this amazingly informative map from Pleated Jeans. [via Laughing Squid] More »
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Feast your eyes on this stunning map of the Lower Mississippi's evolving floodplains, lifted from cartographer Harold Fisk's 1944 report, Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River. More »
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Superheroes are great at solving crimes, but downright awful at the intricacies of spatial design. More »
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While the tongue map may have been thoroughly debunked, what about our brains? Does each kind of flavor get processed in its own little corner of our grey matter? According to new research, they just might. More »
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The US has entered the 34th day of a crippling heat wave, with no sign of relief in sight. According to the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), July's broiling temperatures affected close to 200 million Americans, and set 2,755 daily-high records across the country — including at least one record in every state. More »
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Check out this amazing illustrated map of the seven kingdoms of Westeros — riddled with crests, beasts and heaps and heaps of amazing spoilers. It's simply gorgeous. More »
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HBO's released their version of Westeros earlier this year, but Adam Whitehead of The Wertzone has been pondering the layout for George R.R. Martin's fantastical world for a while now. Here, Whitehead takes a look at the lands beyond Westeros. More »
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Fringe doesn't come back for another couple months, but we haven't stopped obsessing about that baffling cliffhanger, and all the questions that the show has left us struggling with. More »
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Here's another reason why you shouldn't throw away anything ever. Since the mid-1970s, former North Dakota state senator Don Homuth has been in possession of the only known complete copy of a singularly strange "Square Earth" map from the 1800s. More »
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This is the first map ever produced that shows the global output of plant fluorescence. That means you're seeing the most realistic representation of healthy plant life across the entire face of the Earth. More »
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A new interactive map of U.S. cases shows that HIV is probably more prevalent in your neighborhood than you think. More »
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Though it's often said that serial killers and diseases strike at random, a new study shows that they both kill victims in a predictable pattern. That's why the tools criminologists use to track serial killers can also pinpoint the location where an epidemic started. More »
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A couple of years ago, two geographers created one of the most chilling maps you'll ever see - it shows what kinds of natural hazards are most likely to kill you in America. And which regions are the most deadly. More »
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If the mall map from Dawn of the Dead were ridiculously up-to-date, it would likely resemble Matt Owen's layout. Because you really need to know where Boscov's is as the world's coming to an end, of course. More »
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Confused by how River Song's timeline interacts with the Doctor's? Someone has made a handy infographic showing one possible way that all of the events in their lives could match up, based on what we know so far. More »
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On the cusp of the Great Depression, architect Hermann Soergel had a radical idea: Why not expand the landmass of Europe by draining part of the Mediterranean? It was all part of his plan to found the nation of Atlantropa. More »
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National Geographic won a journalism graphics award for an amazing interactive map showing where fresh water comes from on Earth. This is just a taste of what you can find if you visit the map, which shows locations of glaciers, rivers, aquifers, and more. In this part of the map, you can see where groundwater is - and find out that it's not being recharged fast enough to meet local demands. More »
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This is the original map David Lynch drew up of Twin Peaks to sell ABC execs the show's pilot episode. Its purposefully off-kilter topography reflects the show's mysterious goings-on. More »
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You've seen video footage of Game Of Thrones' countryside including the infamous Wall, a 700-foot structure of ice and earth that spans the length of the continent. Now see where it's located, on complete this map of Westeros. More »
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University of Arizona geology researcher Jeremy Weiss has been tracking ways that climate change affects sea levels - in the distant past as well as the future. Given the rate of global warming today, he and his colleagues estimate that by 2100, ocean levels with have risen at least a meter. And it will continue to rise after that. What will this do to people who live in coastal cities? Possibly dunk their cities underwater. And in the case of Florida, possibly dunk half your state beneath the waves. Here are a few future waterline maps Weiss has produced - some show us at the waterline predicted for 2100 (about a meter higher), and some show us in 2200 and beyond as the waters keep rising up to 5 meters. More »
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Navigating the world outside the walls of Mega-City One isn't easy — the Cursed Earth of the 21st century is filled with radiation, mutants, and sundry forms of lurking death. It pays to have zarjaz maps like these lying around. More »
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Laser scanning techniques reveal elaborate cave systems under the town of Nottingham. Some are mines, some are dungeons, and part of this closed-off one was once used as a stable. More »
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The air is full of tiny liquid and solid particles, collectively known as aerosols. They're created by dust storms, volcanic eruptions, human activity, and even the natural passing of the seasons. This amazing map reveals where the aerosols are. More »
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Our dependence on plants shot up from 1995 to 2005, according to a new NASA study. Here's a map that shows which regions use more carbon than they produce (red) and which regions produce more than they use (green). More »
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A group of network analysts wondered whether national boundaries really reflect people's connections to each other. So they looked at links formed between people phoning each other in Great Britain, and discovered which regions really have the most in common. More »
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The universe hasn't changed much in the past 5,000 years, but our understanding of it has. In historian John Ptak's amazing collection of cosmological maps, you can see how our view of the cosmos has changed radically over time. More »
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Want to know where you should live if you are hoping to avoid the next catastrophic earthquake, flood, megavolcano, or storm? Consult our map of disaster hot zones of the world. More »
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Check out this short film that illuminates the barriers between communities of people by tracking the movements of dollar bills. More »
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