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Atlantis Seekers Given Thrill by Google Ocean

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the jump-to-conclusions-mat dept.

RcK writes "Numerous articles are springing up regarding a feature found using the new Google Ocean, which some claim could be the location of Atlantis. While this is obviously early, and probably has the same credibility levels as previous claims of finding the mythical city, the detected anomaly is quite convincingly linear, is apparently the size of Wales and sits near where Plato hypothesized the city to be located." Google has stated that this is an issue with the way their ocean mapping software is working, but clearly that is a cover up while Google execs try to buy the real estate. I just hope they bring back Elvis next.

4 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. The Sun? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Numerous articles and you pick the sun?

    Anyway here it is on google map

    http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=31.480209,-24.120483&spn=2.988616,5.026245&t=h&z=8

    1. Re:The Sun? by peacefinder · · Score: 5, Informative

      Most amusing how the Sun declined to show the scale of the map. For comparison, here's another city at the same scale.

      The similarity is not uncanny. :-)

      --
      With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
  2. experimental arifacts by fermion · · Score: 5, Informative

    While this is funny, it is another example of how artifacts of an experiment can lead to misinterpretation of otherwise valid results. The last big example of this was the man from mars. The most recent is clear and indisputable picture of this humanoid walking across mars. Then of course there is carving of the face on mars. All this comes from the mistaken assumption that somehow a photograph captures the complete reality of a situation. Even without the processing of such photographs, there is always a chance of injecting an artifact.

    --
    "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
  3. Google Ocean topo data is awful. by goodmanj · · Score: 5, Informative

    I spent a lot of time in grad school looking at seafloor topography maps, and let me tell you, the Google Ocean stuff is just *TERRIBLE*.

    Much of the data comes from the GEBCO maps -- General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans. These were hand-drawn topo maps from the early- and mid-20th century. Beginning in the '90s, these were scanned in and digitized, but whoever did it did a lousy job.

    The topo contours on the drawings weren't smoothed out on the digital map, so in many places the sea floor has a "terraced" or "layered" look which is not at all accurate. The original map data was supplemented with modern digital hydrographic data taken by shipboard sonars, but this data is only available along the path of the ship. No real effort was made to sensibly combine the old data with the new, so the new data forms straight lines cutting across the older data.

    Which is what this "Atlantis" is. Some ship did a detailed survey of that area, following a grid search pattern. The data in between is older, less accurate, and mismatched.

    If our land surface data was this bad, Google Earth would be mocked constantly. But since it's the ocean, nobody cares or notices.