GeologyRocksWhat is this pattern 200 miles west of Canarian Islands?
Sep
03
07:06
What is this pattern on ground of the ocean 200 - 300 miles west of canarian islands? I saw it today on google maps. Any ideas?
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Definitely NOT Atlantis! Far
Fri, 09/04/2009 - 09:40Definitely NOT Atlantis! Far too big... Other than that I have no idea, could be some artefact of seafloor spreading I suppose, or alternatively, something to do with the way the images have been processed?
Ben.
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They are sonar tracking
Fri, 09/04/2009 - 10:20They are sonar tracking lines. This area was extensively studied for radioactive waste burial (lots of sediment to put it in) and hence, there are actual sonar lines for this area. As these data are blended with larger-scale data you get some artefacting where they overlap. You can see more obvious artefacts off the west coast of Ireland and in the Gulf of Mexico.
In some places, you can "see" writing on the ocean floor - these were added by the data providers as a watermark...
Geologists are gneiss!!
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Makes sense
Sun, 09/06/2009 - 23:26Makes sense. So all the ocean maps from google are generated by sonar recorded from boats?
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No, I suspect the majority
Mon, 09/07/2009 - 06:27No, I suspect the majority of data are derived from satellite measurements. The reason the tracks appear is that the data from sonar surveys doesn't quite match the satellite data so you get a slightly different depth measurements.
The data that Google use is actually a blend of many data sources. In terms of data, Google is doing nothing particularly new in that respect - the really new thing they've done is implement a fantastic rendering engine that handles all these disparate data sources seamlessly - sometimes the only clue you've switched data sources is that the copyright message changes...
Geologists are gneiss!!