Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Google Atlantis I


Google Ocean has made an intriguing find. It seems to have found the remnants of a great city on the ocean floor in the location that legend claims Atlantis once thrived. Read about it below and see the photos and a video.


Atlantis?

The Greek philosopher Plato is responsible for modern man having any idea that the great city of Atlantis ever existed at all. Plato’s descriptions of Atlantis have fueled the imagination of men throughout the ages. No evidence of the Lost Continent has ever been found, leaving many to believe it is all just myth. Legend, myth or reality, no one has really known for sure. But books, art, movies and fantasies have continued to keep the myth alive and have blurred the lines between fact and fiction, if those lines were ever there to begin with.

Now modern technology meets ancient mythology through Google Ocean. The search engine giant has extended their program, Google Earth, to allow web users to explore the oceans through thousands of images of underwater landscapes. I’m not quite sure how they have gotten the images. I strongly suspect they don’t have little Volkswagons getting them the way they are getting the images for Google Earth.

Bernie Bamford, 38, of Chester, England found the formation of perfect grids on the ocean floor. The grids are laid out like city blocks and in such a way that it would be difficult to believe they aren’t man made. Its co-ordinates are 31 15′15.53N 24 15′30.53W. What has been found is roughly the size of Wales and it is in the primary location that scientist believe the Lost Continent would have been, near the Canary Islands off the coast of north west Africa.

Last night, Atlantis experts confirmed that the location of the grids are in a place likely to have once been the great city. Archaeologists who have looked at the evidence say that it warrants further investigation. All in all, its intriguing to think that the legend of Atlantis might actually be true and the ruins of the great civilization might be found, by Google no less.

Plato described Atlantis as a highly evolved civilization, very advanced for the time in terms of science, literature and culture. The island was ‘larger than Libya and Asia put together’. According to Plato, the island was disappeared shortly after a failed attempt to conquer Greece. Earthquakes and floods destroyed the island kingdom about 9,000 B.C. So says the legend.

Google Earth, Google Ocean (and Google Mars) are giving us unparalleled access to never before seen places. Its truly fascinating and the possibilities are exciting and fun to imagine.

Unfortunately, Google has debunked the theory that Atlantis has been discovered. Just since I started writing this article, they have come out with a statement explaining away the grid system as trails used by sonar from boats collecting data from the ocean floor.

A spokeswoman said: “It’s true that many amazing discoveries have been made in Google Earth including a pristine forest in Mozambique that is home to previously unknown species and the remains of an Ancient Roman villa.

“In this case, however, what users are seeing is an artefact of the data collection process.

“Bathymetric (or sea floor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the sea floor.

“The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data.

“The fact that there are blank spots between each of these lines is a sign of how little we really know about the world’s oceans.”

Who knew there were so many boats taking sonar maps of the ocean floor in such a precise pattern! That doesn’t seem logical. Besides, that’s no where near as exciting an explanation as finding Atlantis. Sigh.

LINK

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