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21 Feb 2009
Google has denied claims made in the national papers that its Google Earth tool had been used to discover a grid of streets in the ocean thought to be the lost city of Atlantis.
The claim was originally made to The Sun newspaper by UK aeronautical engineer Bernie Bamford who saw a grid of lines undersea off the coast of west Africa, a location Atlantis experts have argued is one of the possible sites of the lost metropolis.
Plato had described Atlantis sinking into the ocean "in a single day and night of misfortune" around 9000 BC, after the city had failed in its attempt to invade Athens. The remains of the city have never been found.
But Google said that the criss-crossing lines seen by Bamford were in fact made by boats using sonar technology to collect data from the sea floor.
"Bathymetric (or sea floor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the sea floor," said a Google spokesperson. "The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data."
Bamford had been using the latest version of Google's earth mapping system, Google Earth 5.0, which traces the ocean floor and includes surface data from marine experts.
Google said that, although the Atlantis claim was false, Google Earth had been used for other "amazing discoveries", including a pristine forest in Mozambique that is home to previously unknown species, and the remains of an ancient Roman villa.
In related news, Google has fixed an incompatibility issue between its Chrome browser and the Google Earth plug-in version.
In the Google Earth Notifications List, the firm said: "Google Chrome 1.0+ on Windows is an officially supported browser. That means Chrome users will no longer get the unsupported browser message, and the plug-in and API [application programming interface] should work just as they would in other supported browsers."
The plug-in and its JavaScript API allows developers to embed Google Earth into their web page to make sophisticated mashups.
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Do you agree?
Google is right and rejects Atlantis discovery, of course!
Atlantis is discovered long ago! http://www.cosmogeology.ge/chapter.htm Ten island of Atlantis: Huge Poseidia, two small islands (Pluto, Ammon (mu)) and seven smaller Persephone's islands had been sunken into the ocean 12,500 years ago.
Posted by: K. Margiani 10 Apr 2009
For those of you that have questions:
I received this explanation from Colin L. Jacobs, the GEBCO Bathymetric Editor and International Liaison: Very little high resolution imagery exists for the ocean floor - and what you have seen in Google is a perfect example of that. The oceans are vast and in reality we have very, very few actual measurements of the depth, especially in the deep ocean basins such as off Madeira (indeed the deep marine territories of the UK have yet to be fully mapped too). If you "zoom out" on Google Earth from the areas identified in THE SUN you will see that to the north-west lie the Azores Islands, and here Google Earth apparently shows two distinct levels of detail. The very complex and twisted area that lay to the west of Acor Bank is real survey data, whereas the smoother seabed surrounding this is what is predicted from the satellite data. In areas of steep undersea mountains such as to the west of the Azores, whilst you can see differences in the fine detail, the two data sets blend rather well, however in areas of flat seabed like that off Madeira this is not always the case. What you are seeing in the area indicated in THE SUN is a broad background of "predicted" bathymetry or depth with the intersecting and criss-crossing lines being real survey data . In technical jargon we call this an "artefact".
Posted by: Rosalie Marshall 23 Feb 2009
idiots
sonor is not dragged across the sea floor,also, the size is wrong if it were...what date was it made by sonor what ship? i thought not....
Posted by: tony b. 23 Feb 2009
Sonar can not possibly produce physical features!
Especially not on that scale!
Posted by: Acibeb 23 Feb 2009
This guy stole his info!!!
Hello People! Wake up. www.ancientgrid.com discovered this on January 22, 2009! Credit the right people and turn this Bamford in for a a fake!
Posted by: Ashley 22 Feb 2009
Well if google says so...
"Boat wakes" that are 80+ miles long. Really? This isn't sand in a desert folks. Just how do boats produce mutiple right angles, in a grid fashion no less. Time to hit us with another, even more contrived, explanation.
Posted by: WizeUp 22 Feb 2009
Is this artifact visible anywhere else on the sea bed in Google Earth?
If this is the case, and the lines are caused by the data collection process, can they show us anywhere else on the sea bed where the same, or a similar, artifact is visible?
Posted by: Dave 21 Feb 2009
So why?
If this is an artrifact of soundings, why do we not see it elsewhere? What was special about that particular bit of ocean floor that it was picked out for scanning like this? I would be a lot better prepared to believe this explanation if Google pointed to a couple of dozen other similar grids on other parts of the ocean floor.
Posted by: Disbeliever 21 Feb 2009
Explanation seems logical but...
If the lines are the result the track used by the boats why aren't these grids showing up all over the ocean; or are they but that is not being reported? A diving crew should be able to clear up the hoax, question, or myth pretty quickly.
Posted by: George McGinnis 21 Feb 2009