A couple weeks ago on the Nerdbunker podcast, I joked that Google Earth’s new endeavor to map the oceans on Earth may result in finally finding the lost city of Atlantis. (Pretty sure that’s the most links I’ve ever crammed into an opening sentence).
Check it:
A British aeronautical engineer was playing around with the new Google Earth 5.0, which includes undersea data, and noticed something funny off the coast of Africa, about 600 miles west of the Canary Islands, that resembled a pattern of a street grid.
The internet pretty much took it from there. Rumors have been flying that the mythical sunken city has finally been found. Here’s a video that shows you the area on Google Earth:
Google was quick to squash the speculation:
It’s true that many amazing discoveries have been made in Google Earth including a pristine forest in Mozambique that is home to previously unknown species and the remains of an Ancient Roman villa. In this case, however, what users are seeing is an artefact of the data collection process. Bathymetric (or sea floor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the sea floor. The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data.
That’s right, they’re saying Atlantis is sonar from the boats collecting data! Huh?
Can anybody explain this to me so the conspiracy theorist part of my brain will stop hurting?
Via cnet
Hey, surfed in from a BSG comment you left on io9… nice blog! Anyway the best “anti-theory” I’ve heard so far (I wish I could find a link) says that the lines are too wide to realistically be a city. In other words, the article suggested that the logical “entrance” to the city was miles across.
Who knows! ? The truth is out there.
Hey Adam,
Thanks for checking out Achieve Nerdvana!
The anti theory makes sense — one site stated that the image is far too large to be an ancient city, in fact 20 times larger than London.
Google Earth is still young. If this isn’t Atlantis, who knows, maybe they’ll find the real thing. I think the whole world would be stoked. Except maybe Aquaman.
Imagine you’re harvesting corn in a large combine…
By removing the corn off the surface, ideally, you should be able to see the features of the earth immediately below in pristine detail.
Alas, the combine leaves a less than pristine surface.
The process of collecting the corn also leaves telltale track marks in the path of the collection. These aren’t “roads” on the corn field, they’re merely the residue of the technology used to collect the corn.
Something similar is taking place with the sonar. Ideally, you should see a pristine (seamless) surface on the ocean floor. However, if the patchwork process was amiss or if the sonar were of older generation, the collection process itself will leave “tracks” after the image has been recombined as the edge scan doesn’t match the center scan.
…Hope that makes sense.
Thanks, eksith! That definitely makes more sense than the vague explanation I found from Google.