Monday, February 23, 2009

Google: Just Data Artifacts, Not Atlantis

Mountain View-based Google has put to rest the unsubstantiated, rampant blog speculation last Friday that the firm's Google Earth program had found the lost city of Atlantis, saying Monday that the "odd markings" seen on its new Ocean mapping feature in Google Earth are actually just the artifacts of the process of mapping the ocean floor using echosounding. The firm, posting comments from Walter Smith, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and David Sandwell, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, two experts in ocean exploration, pointed out similar "ship tracks" north of Hawaii, also a result of the process.