Google Oceans
Atlantis Found?
The biggest news since the launch of Google Ocean was the supposed find of Atlantis.
English aeronautical engineer, Bernie Bamford thought he found the famed city when he viewed what looked like a grid of streets and outlines of a big city on the sea floor 600 miles off the coast of West Africa on the Google software.
However, Google publicly disputed the discovery of Atlantis. The grids are in fact gaps in data collected using sonar technology. A Google spokesperson stated to the press; “The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data. The fact there are blank spots between each of these lines is a sign of how little we really know about the world’s oceans. Bathymetric (or sea floor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the sea floor.”
Although, Google Earth has been an effective research and data collection tool, Atlantis will not be added to the list of discoveries. Discoveries by Google Earth also include pristine forest in Mozambique and the remains of an ancient Roman villa. Academy entomologist Brian Fisher even immortalized the name Google in the annals of science by naming a new ant species after it back in 2005. He named the ant Proceratium google because of the incredible support Google gave to creating antweb.com. The Antweb site allowed scientists and ant aficionados to download the Google Earth program in order to plot known ants to Antweb on a three dimensional, interactive globe of satellite images. The technology looked up ants by location, rather than by name. Therefore a team collecting ants could quickly assess if they have found a new species using the website.
With such an incredible tool now delving into the depths of the oceans, it is only a matter of time for yet another spectacular discovery to make it to the list. Who knows? Atlantis might still be out there waiting to be found…
-Cat
