Google Earth To Show Ocean Floor 181
f1vlad writes "Google is expected to announce the addition of ocean floor imagery to its Google Earth project, which will complete digital representation of our planet. 'The existing site, to which an estimated 400 million people have had access, already includes three-dimensional representations of large cities around the world and includes images from street-level and aerial photography covering thousands of miles across Britain and elsewhere. The new additions to the website are expected to include views of the ocean, and portions of the seabed. They will also provide detailed environmental data that will enhance information about the effect of climate change on the world's seas and oceans.'"
Well, there goes my plan (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well, there goes my plan (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well, there goes my plan (Score:5, Informative)
Google hasn't updated the maps around here for 10 years . . .
Re:Well, there goes my plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah it's the same here. They can get the ocean floors in, but can't get anything even resembling a recent image of my area.
Re:Well, there goes my plan (Score:5, Interesting)
Since they just display the most recent imagery that their providers have, the issue isn't with Google but the fact that appearently no one considers your plot of land important enough to actually photograph. If you want an ego boost, find out how much it costs to charter one of the companies providing the aerial photography to do a fly by of your area.
Re:Well, there goes my plan (Score:5, Funny)
So what's the deal with that?
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There was a discussion on the disappearing Aral Sea on another forum. Someone was trying to use Google Earth to make a point but the imagery seems to be 7-9 years old.
Where I am currently posting from, in Germany the imagery is also about 7 years old. I seem to remember there is a way of getting the date of the imagery but we recognised an old car that we had then.
Google imagery is great, but please could they update it from time to time. I know that current satellite imagery is a valuable commodity and wou
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Uh... I thought Google just launched one or more of their own satellites? Am I mistaken?
If I am remembering this right and they have their own new satellites, when are we (ever) going to see new/recent imagery? I've been waiting ever since I read (hallucinated?) about Google launching their own satellites. What's up with that, anyway?
Vortran out
Re:Well, there goes my plan (Score:4, Informative)
Coincidently enough, your answer was published today.
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=3927935&c=FEA&s=BUS [defensenews.com]
Waiting for Profits in Space
GeoEye Fights Delays With New Imaging Satellite
By ANTONIE BOESSENKOOL
Published: 2 February 2009
Anyone who's used Google Earth has likely seen images from GeoEye, a Dulles, Va., Earth-imaging company. The Internet giant allows users to zoom in from a view of a continent to a car on the street by using images from GeoEye, along with ones from competitor DigitalGlobe, the U.S. Geological Survey and elsewhere.
GeoEye has used its flagship Ikonos satellite to provide images for Google and the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), its biggest customer. But those customers - and investors - have been waiting for GeoEye-1, the company's newest satellite, to become fully operational.
GeoEye-1 has faced delays from launch to operation, and as a result, the company has been missing out on revenues under a new NGA contract.
GeoEye-1, a two-story-tall satellite built by a contractor team led by General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, is the world's highest-resolution commercial Earth-imaging satellite, according to the company. The first image the satellite took was of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania; a tennis player is visible about to serve the ball.
GeoEye-1's launch, originally planned for the first quarter of 2007, finally took place last Sept. 6. Work went slower than planned, then the launch was bumped to allow Boeing Launch Services to give priority to a U.S. government launch. Once in orbit, the satellite suffered from delays in calibrating its accuracy and testing its software. The process, which normally takes up to three months, has lasted five so far, according to GeoEye spokes-man Mark Brender.
GeoEye has told investors for several months that the company is nearing the end of this phase. Matt O'Connell, the company's president and chief executive, said the GeoEye-1 satellite should be fully operational at least by the end of the first quarter of 2009, though GeoEye is aiming for sometime this month.
"We're still in the process of fine-tuning the accuracy," O'Connell said. "You make a change, you do a couple of orbits, you look at the imagery, you test it, you find what you think might be a bug, you do another change. So it's an iterative process, so it takes a while."
The process now is focusing on aligning the positional accuracy of the satellite with the GPS grid, he said. "We're all disappointed that it hasn't gone faster. But we're excited that we are nearing the end of the tunnel."
O'Connell said testing that he's seen lately makes him more confident that GeoEye-1 is getting closer to becoming fully operational, as more glitches are eliminated and the satellite is "hitting accuracy levels that are near our target."
What's hanging in the balance is a new Service Level Agreement with the NGA that would boost GeoEye's revenues. Once GeoEye-1 is operational and the NGA certifies GeoEye-1 images as meeting the agency's standards, NGA will buy $12.5 million in GeoEye-1 images a month under its NextView program. That will give GeoEye a consistent revenue source after somewhat bumpy revenues in recent quarters. Revenues were down 24 percent to $106 million for the first nine months of 2008.
GeoEye's competitor, DigitalGlobe, won the first contract under the NextView program. Its satellite, WorldView-3, provides black-and-white images to NGA.
"We're comfortable the GeoEye is on a path that's going to have [GeoEye-1] operational and available for NGA taskings," NGA spokesman Dave Burpee said.
In the meantime, the NGA and Google keep buying images from Ikonos, which was launched in 1999 by GeoEye's predecessor company, Space Imaging. GeoEye was formed in 2006 when OrbImage, a company O'Connell also headed, bought Space Imaging, a Lockheed Martin-Raytheon joint venture.
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Since they just display the most recent imagery that their providers have, the issue isn't with Google
Except that Microsoft Virtual Earth and (I think) Mapquest have at times had significantly better or newer imagery for the same location. I've actually created KML files where I've taken an image from another mapper and made it an image in the KML because GE was out of date and didn't show the roads or was in lower resolution.
One can hire planes to take pictures, it's not all satellites. If it was, they w
I guess you don't live in Germany (Score:2)
http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2009/01/marijuana_field_found.html [gearthblog.com]
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You must not live in the United States. Do you have any idea how much they are monitoring communications here?
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I'm going to guess that it isn't going to affect wreck divers at all, as any deep-sea images will probably be artificial, and based on either satellite or sonar readings, which probably don't have the resolution to detect anything like a wreck (or else they would all be found now). I imagine the readings used to image the ocean floor aren't really good for much besides a rough image of the ocean floor to an accuracy of +- 100 meters or so.
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Plus Emilio Largo [imdb.com] is going to have to move his secret operations.
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Two words. (Score:5, Interesting)
Can't wait to see how that looks.
Re:Two words. (Score:5, Funny)
Marianas Trench.
Can't wait to see how that looks.
Really, really dark.
Re:Two words. (Score:5, Funny)
remember goatse? well think deeper and darker
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remember goatse? well think deeper and darker
But not as large.
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remember goatse?
honestly is there anyone who DOESN'T remember?
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Lucky bastards.
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remember goatse? well think deeper and darker
What has been seen cannot be unseen.
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Long, deep and wet.
Wondering (Score:2)
Whoops (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder if a few of my "special jobs" as a concrete mixer will show up on these maps. If so, anyone got a list of countries without an extradition treaty with the U.S.?
Re:Whoops (Score:5, Funny)
If so, anyone got a list of countries without an extradition treaty with the U.S.?
Wikipedia has a list for everything. [wikipedia.org]
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Depends on if one of the special jobs was there...
Ship Wrecks (Score:2)
Or the level of zoom is not that great ?
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Yeah, myself... I'm waiting for them to get Streetview of the ocean floor....
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Huh? No it hasn't. There's been lots of mysterious disappearances there. The best theory I've heard is that methane bubbles from ocean floor deposits of frozen methane caused ships to sink, and even airplanes to crash. Discovery had a good program on it a while ago.
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Neat trick. You made Randi's website disappear!
Floating Garbage Islands in the Pacific Ocean (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Floating Garbage Islands in the Pacific Ocean (Score:5, Funny)
You mean New Zealand?
Re:Floating Garbage Islands in the Pacific Ocean (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps now we'll be able to see those massive floating garbage islands in the Pacific Ocean that we're always hearing about.
You mean New Zealand?
I believe he meant Australia, he did say massive
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Yeah New Zealand is just one big Hollywood back lot nowadays....
Re:Floating Garbage Islands in the Pacific Ocean (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd be modded Flamebait if any Aussies could actually get through their Internet filter to Slashdot.
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Wow, that's like... some Morpheus shit right there.
Like... if a troll posts on a forum and there's no one to read it, does he still masturbate furiously to Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Willow lesbian fanfic?
Bathymetry (Score:2)
Funny yes, insightful, not sure. What's at stake is bathymetry (well.. that's what the rumors say), the 'topography' of the ocean floors, not satellite imagery of huge areas of surface water.
Can someone tell me why we're discussing this as a state of rumor when a few hours later (after the actual announcement), we would have solid elements to discuss?!
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Actually, no one has been able to see them.
They don't exist.
People ahve reported them, sure. OTOH, people ahve reported Bigfoot as well.
"street-level and aerial photography " (Score:2)
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In Google Maps and Google Earth, Massachusetts is all aerial photography, because the state pays for and supplies it under an open content (but perhaps not Open Content) license. If you zoom in on the northeast US, you can see Massachusetts very well defined from a pretty high zoom.
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Nearly all the street-level photos on Google Maps are aerial rather than satellite. If you can see windows in houses or road markings, then they are definitely aerial. Publically available satellite imagery is rarely much better than 1m resolution but some of the best govenment operated satellites claim to have resolutions comparable to aerial photos (I've not seen any samples myself though).
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I think people get confused as Google calls it's button "Satellite" even when aerial photography from planes is being used.
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I doubt you can get this [google.co.uk] level of detail from a publically available satellite image (and there's two more zoom levels after what I linked to!)
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There's actually 3 levels. And I think I saw me mum.
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Wow! I can see the CCTV cameras on every corner!
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Slight modifications (Score:5, Funny)
And now they'll have to adapt the vans that do the street level photography. Some fish are going to be quite surprised.
Who wouldn't want to spend a month in a van and take several hundred million identical pictures? (Any resemblance with your holidays is pure coincidence).
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Not to mention the van drivers will be surprised when they encounter the sharks with frickin lasers.
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google are evil
first they kill bambi [guardian.co.uk]
next up nemo
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I'll be ok with it if they substitute nemo with emo...
in addition to shipwrecks... (Score:3, Interesting)
There are some other sites that not everyone will be pleased will be in the public domain.
How about the locations of sunken nuclear subs like the Thresher and the Russian sub the Glomar Challenger went after? There are some nuclear warheads still down there!
Aren't there also a couple of nukes still "lost at sea" but with the approximate locations known?
Also, how about the plutonium in the Apollo 13 Lunar Module that was impacted in "the deep Pacific"?
My point is with rent-a-submersible services available (I guess from primarily, you guessed it, Russian vendors) it might be possible to pick up some dangerous things. In addition there are a few ecological sites (some "black smokers") that Oceanographers have been trying to keep secret to preserve them. Other than that, it seems like a great idea!
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Huh? Submarines have been able to go to the deepest parts of our oceans for decades. Heck, people dived to the bottom of the Marianas Trench (deepest place on Earth) back in 1960 with a bathyscaphe: Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]. Basically, the problem is what you said: grabbing objects isn't that easy, and requires robotic arms. This isn't that hard anymore, since we have lots of deep-sea submersibles with arms, but those are mainly meant for grabbing small objects, not nuclear weapons or other large objects.
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10% coverage to start - I find that impressive (Score:4, Interesting)
"FTA: Although, so far, there has been only limited data collected about the sea floor, with just 10% of the habitat mapped at any useful scale for science..."
I wonder how is going to work, since I'm guessing they cannot really 'map' the bottom of the ocean in the same way they do surface objects. Satellites with radar, ships with sonar?
Stil, considering how vast the oceans are, even 10% coverage is pretty impressive.
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Satellites with radar, ships with sonar?
Noooooo. Sharks with frickin' lasers !
Mod me redundant - I don't care. Someone had to say it.
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Thanks for that - interesting. This tends to confirm what I thought, namely that mapping the entire ocean floor to any meaningful level of detail is probably going to be prohibitively expensive?
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...Britain? (Score:2)
Gee, I thought you could already see the entire friggin' planet, not just one tiny island.
Anyway, I'm hoping for much-improved resolutions throughout the globe. Many places certainly don't reach the 50cm resolution that their own spacecraft gives them...
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Gee, I thought you could already see the entire friggin' planet, not just one tiny island.
The article quoted (and linked to) in the summary is from a British newspaper ;-)
(And most places in Britain seem to have high-resolution images, but Great Britain is only... erm... 0.14% of the land surface of Earth.)
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Great Britain is only... erm... 0.14% of the land surface of Earth.
So what's so "Great" about it then?
Their ego's...
Hasn't this already happened? (Score:5, Informative)
check out the northwest coast of the US for a good example.
I don't know if this is an example of whats to come or if whats to come is going to be even better but I welcome higher resolution imagery of our planet.
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What you're seeing there is the underwater part of the continental shelf. The sea floor is a totally different beast altogether.
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I love the underwater river beds off the coasts of northern California.
Re:Hasn't this already happened? (Score:4, Funny)
but I welcome higher resolution imagery of our planet
but I welcome higher resolution imagery of sunken treasure ships.
Ocean, the (short term) final frontier (Score:4, Funny)
This will backfire bigtime. (Score:3, Interesting)
The ocean is so large and so vast, that, if Google codes the images honestly, that, people will readily see that for the most part, the bottom of the ocean is generally unexplored, that measurements of deep waters are infrequent and not in very many areas. They will see a few tiny areas where things have been photographed extensively, but, those will be but small points on a very, very large map. All of this unknown will open up ocean climate claims to ridicule, as if, measuring a drop of water in the shallow end of the swimming pool can somehow categorize the whole thing.
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That's one of the points, to show people how little we know of the ocean
Oh, I agree that it could be that, and I also agree that we should be exploring the bottom of the ocean more, in fact, we ought ought to be monitoring it with a permanent deep sea measuring network.
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Bad analogy. That's like saying you don't understand how a swimming pool works because you don't have pictures of the tiles at the bottom of the pool at microscopic levels of details. There is a vast body of knowledge about the oceans - currents, salinity, flows, weather. Of course, there is a huge amount to learn and we really
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the bottom of the ocean is generally unexplored, that measurements of deep waters are infrequent and not in very many areas
I guess this depends on your data source. Our submarines have very good maps, and much of the Cold War was spent making them.
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Everyday, I check my self every single water molecule comming from my home taps. A drop testing from the water company is clearly not safe
If that's the case, then, why do we even bother with the FDA? Certainly, we could just check one cow per year.
Actually we do.. (Score:2)
You don't test every cow in the us.
Bzzt, wrong. Actually, all USDA graded beef, is in fact, inspected by the USDA. Every carcass gets a stamp, from someone inspecting it. If you buy a piece of USDA anything, that means, someone at least eyeballed the dead cow and put a stamp on it.
The controversy comes from, how much inspection there is. Some would say not enough.
Thor's twins? (Score:3, Funny)
Finally, the russians will be able to find Red October!
What about the alien bases? (Score:2)
Will Google be compelled to blot out the alien bases like they did for Area 51?
how about updating the existing terrestrial maps.. (Score:2)
What about ice caps? (Score:2)
Google Earth 5 available (Score:2)
As seen on Ogle Earth [ogleearth.com], Google Earth 5 is available for download [google.com]. Includes the new Ocean layer.
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Doesn't start up for me (Ubuntu Intrepid).
Anybody know how to fix this: ./googleearth-bin: relocation error: /usr/lib32/i686/cmov/libssl.so.0.9.8: symbol BIO_test_flags, version OPENSSL_0.9.8 not defined in file libcrypto.so.0.9.8 with link time reference
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Yep, that worked. Thanks!
Update the Land Imagery (Score:2, Interesting)
Sigh... (Score:3, Interesting)
Draging anchors over submerged fiber optic cables? (Score:2)
Of course, it is just a matter of time before someone puts geographically identified snapshots of a corpses wearing 'concrete shoes' on particular spots the ocean floor...
multiple-age satellite maps (Score:2)
Pacific Trash Vortex now available on Google Earth (Score:2)
For the first time, web surfers can surf amongst some of the estimated 100 million tonnes of plastic and assorted human refuse that has been accumulating in the middle of the North Pacific Gyre since the 1950s - all without getting their hands dirty.
Demonstrating the far superior beauty available from Web 2.0 applications, in comparison to the grubby ocea
Re:Google's world domination (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Ooops.... This is what happens... (Score:4, Interesting)
ha! the street view car that hit the deer, the accident occurred about 3 miles from my house. In their defense, there are thousands of deer roaming the area, so many that car deer collisions are a daily thing, and it's not at all uncommon to see a carcass on the side of the road.
The undersea stuff is interesting because it might give a top-down view of wrecks if the wreck is in shallow water.
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no really, what's interesting is they really don't feed them. Some provide salt-licks, most just ignore them.
It's an artifact of loads of food, ample opportunity, almost no hunting in the area and horny deer. Pretty simple math actually.
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It was on one of the discovery channel series, but I forgot what it's called. Anyone know?
Dirty Jobs [wikipedia.org] ?
Oh no, that was the show where Steve [wikipedia.org] did a British version [wikipedia.org] of Jackass [wikipedia.org].
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