Google Earth Update Erases Underwater 'Atlantis' Error

A Google Earth map that raised rumors of the lost city of Atlantis has gotten a much-needed update, ridding the seafloor of a gridlike pattern that some vigilant users suspected were sunken streets from the mythological underwater city. In fact, Google Ocean, an extension of map program Google Earth, was merely displaying a data artifact from the sonar method that oceanographers use to map the seafloor. This week, Google updated the application with new seafloor data from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other groups. "The original version of Google Ocean was a newly developed prototype map that had high resolution but also contained thousands of blunders related to the original archived ship data," David Sandwell, a Scripps geophysicist, said in a statement. "UCSD undergraduate students spent the past three years identifying and correcting the blunders." [more]