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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.

9 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. The SUN is always an entertaining read ... by xmas2003 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's fun to read article in The Sun (ditto the National Enquirer). While there may be some validity in the findings (especially if you wear a tin foil hat), if you RTFM, it's a hilarious read complete with pictures of Patrick Duffy from the 1970's TV show "Man from Atlantis" along with an artists impression of the "lost metropolis" under water.

    Speaking of nifty water shots, here's some cool pictures and time-lapse webcam images of the Antarctica Cruise Ship Ocean Nova which recently ran aground. Good news is everyone is safe, but they had to evacuate the passengers to another ship; guess they got quite an adventure! ;-)

    --
    Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
  2. 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 Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Where's the street view guy? That's what we really need.

    2. 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
  3. Where else is this glitch? by eagee · · Score: 5, Interesting

    'Just wondering if anyone has seen links to other examples of this glitch? I mean, I imagine if it's a flaw in their sonar system that it would've shown up somewhere else, right?

  4. The real 'atlantis' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules"

    While Gibraltar, and the Atlas mountains is today called The Pillars of Hercules, in Greek times there were many. There were navigation pillars, or columns, that set up to be clearly visible as guides to the seafaring. They were commonly called "Pillars of Hercules" and so when Plato referred to this he may have been saying it about anywhere in the Meditarranean.

    The '9000 years' is most likely a translation or transcription error for 900 years.

    '900 years' before Plato's time there was a civilisation on an island that 'disappeared'. This was on Thera, today called Santorini, which was the largest volcanic erruption in the last few thousand years.

  5. The Minoan Hypothesis by spun · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I used to live on Crete, Greece, and was amazed at the sophistication of ancient Minoan culture. By 2,000 BC, the Minoans had huge, multi-level palaces with running water and sewers. The Minoan civilization was wiped out when Santorini erupted. To the proto-Greeks of 2,000 BC, Minoan technology must have seemed almost magical.

    I've read a theory that Plato's description of Atlantis is based on memories of the Minoans. The description fits, except for the location (Crete is in the Mediterranean, while Plato thought Atlantis was in the Atlantic.) Plato knew of Crete and the Minoans, though, but perhaps the stories were unclear or ambiguous.

    --
    - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
  6. 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
  7. 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.