Google Debunks Maps Atlantis Myth 82
prxi writes "Recently speculation spread that Atlantis may have been located on Google Ocean. Now Google has posted a blog entry, written by two oceanographers, explaining what exactly caused the strange markings off the coast of Africa. The authors also note that we have better maps of the surface of Mars than we do of our own oceans, and go into detail on what would be required to obtain a fine-grained map of the ocean floor. Apparently it's only 200 ship years of work, or around the cost of a modern stadium, give or take."
The reason.. (Score:4, Informative)
Reason for those lines: Ship tracks due to the way oceanographic equipment work.
Re:So ... (Score:2, Informative)
But you'll still end up paying the price of *one* stadium, whichever solution you use.
Thats assuming that the ships and the scanning equipment already exists and may be employed (rented/hired) at a constant cost/time. If you have to invest in the equipment, then the overall cost goes up as a product of the number of ships you use.
If I were to put this in terms of a car analogy . . .
Re:Earth's Oceans Vs. Mars Surface (Score:3, Informative)
It's far more complicated than that. Some of our ocean floor data is obtained through classified channels, and thus can't be published; even more of it is obtained via treaties and agreements that make the data "unclassified, restricted to DOD only", which means it still can't be published on Google.
Re:The reason.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The reason.. (Score:3, Informative)
Its not a single patch.. there are hundreds, maybe thousands of such patches, only all the eyes watching GMaps found a few of these.
The one off Africa got a lot of publicity due to the "Atlantis" hype.. the interest in the particular area is simply the internet word of mouth effect.