The Google Earth Atlantis

February 25, 2009, 6:34 am
Google Explains Watery Mystery of ‘Atlantis’
By Jenna Wortham

The bizarre markings spotted using Google Earth’s new underwater search tool last week unleashed a tsunami of theories and speculation across the Web about the origins of the grid-like pattern.

The most popular theory was that the markings were signs of the lost city of Atlantis. But Bits readers also wondered if the maze of lines could be anything from the mystical island featured on the television show “Lost” to an underwater lair inhabited by former Vice President Dick Cheney.

According to Google, it’s time to shelve those tinfoil hats.

In an interview, Steve Miller, product manager for Ocean in Google Earth, firmly debunked rumors that the crisscross markings were anything other than artificial data remnants left by sonar-equipped boats collecting data from the ocean floor.

While sound waves are considered to be more effective than satellites for mapping strips of the ocean floor, they’re often more expensive and time-consuming to use. “The boats have to go slowly. Otherwise, they make a lot of noise and can wash out the readings,” said Mr. Miller. As a result, boats are used less frequently, leaving fewer grid-like sonar patterns visible on Google Earth’s map of the ocean.

For the patch of ocean that drew so much attention last week, there was a discrepancy in the readings collected from satellites and the higher-resolution echosounding data collected by boats at water level. That caused exaggerated traces to show up on the map. Typically, when data collected by satellites and sonar surveys are blended, the result is much smoother, Mr. Miller said. But here, the “batches of imagery didn’t overlap properly.”

Mr. Miller compared it to the blurry stripes that are occasionally visible in Google Earth’s land maps. “Those patches are from cameras and instruments using different resolutions,” he said. Over time, those uneven patches smooth out as Google puts more images and data into the system.

As for the speculation that the markings off the western coast of Africa were located near one of the possible sites of the fabled sunken city of Atlantis, Mr. Miller said it was a coincidence. “To my knowledge, the researchers weren’t looking for Atlantis. They conducted this survey many years ago.” They very likely sent out a boat to comb for additional readings in this particular area, he said.

Mr. Miller also highlighted several other findings in Google Earth’s new Ocean feature, including a newly formed volcanic island close to Hawaii and an underwater mountain range in the Atlantic Ocean where two tectonic plates are visibly shifting away from one another.

Was the whole “Atlantis” uproar a well-orchestrated publicity stunt for Google’s new ocean maps, which were introduced earlier this month?

Mr. Miller said no. But the reports certainly drew a lot of armchair explorers eager to view the waterlogged pattern. Searches for “google ocean” and “atlantis google ocean” spiked over the last several days.