Google Earth is a pretty nifty piece of software. You get to see the planet, land and ocean on your computer. To mark their three year anniversary of 3D Ocean in Google Earth, they made some changes to the program. According to the Google's Lat Long Blog, Google has 'cleaned up' the ocean floor a bit, by removing stray artifacts and images visible in the ocean. Google says, "The update covers ocean topography from all over the globe and reveals our most accurate view of the seafloor to date. This new detail comes from spacecraft measurements of bumps and dips in the ocean surface as well as shipboard soundings from surveys carried out by over 40 countries. With this update to ocean terrain data in Google Earth, 15 percent of the seafloor is now available at 1 km resolution."
It seems the cleanup also involved the removal of entire lost lands. The lost land of Atlantis, which Google 'placed' off the coast of North Africa, back in 2009 is not visible on Google Earth anymore. Back in 2009, a grid like shape was seen in Google Ocean, an extension of Google Earth, and many people believed that Google had discovered the lost island of Atlantis. The reason this grid existed was because of the way a ship went back and forth using sonar to collect information on the ocean floor. The grid is a result of ship tracks as explained by Google in their blog, back in 2009.
Other clean up efforts, include an area in the Mediterranean Sea, especially just south of Cyprus where the boundary between Eurasian and Arabian plates is more clearly defined. Another area in the Pacific Ocean, Guam and the Mariana Trench have been improved in resolution. The update comes from work done by Google in conjunction with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in partnership with NOAA, the US Navy, NGA, and GEBCO (with major contributions from IFREMER and IBCAO). Check out the video below for a visual tour of the updates that Google's made in Google Ocean.
It seems the cleanup also involved the removal of entire lost lands. The lost land of Atlantis, which Google 'placed' off the coast of North Africa, back in 2009 is not visible on Google Earth anymore. Back in 2009, a grid like shape was seen in Google Ocean, an extension of Google Earth, and many people believed that Google had discovered the lost island of Atlantis. The reason this grid existed was because of the way a ship went back and forth using sonar to collect information on the ocean floor. The grid is a result of ship tracks as explained by Google in their blog, back in 2009.
Other clean up efforts, include an area in the Mediterranean Sea, especially just south of Cyprus where the boundary between Eurasian and Arabian plates is more clearly defined. Another area in the Pacific Ocean, Guam and the Mariana Trench have been improved in resolution. The update comes from work done by Google in conjunction with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in partnership with NOAA, the US Navy, NGA, and GEBCO (with major contributions from IFREMER and IBCAO). Check out the video below for a visual tour of the updates that Google's made in Google Ocean.
