Google Earth’s Atlantis: trick of light and shadow again? (update)

At first glance this doesn’t look anything like Atlantis. At second glance, Google’s response to the discovery sounds a lot like NASA’s ‘the face on Mars is merely a trick of light and shadow‘.

Google claims:

“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.”

This ‘city grid’ on the floor of the Atlantic ocean is about 150km in length and 120 km broad. That’s about half the size of our little Belgium. So if it were a city, it must have been a city for giants, or a country with many highways. Let’s call it a rectangular country. According to Google’s explanation, this paterns sould be found all around the Earth’s oceanic floors. Scraping the Earth’s oceans takes a lot of time, but nope. It is only there one can find this Face On Mars like oceanic geometry. Keep in mind this is 4954 meters below sea level. What could it be? Before you waste time on that: ask yourself the question: has the company Google a reliable trackrecord of precision and genuinity?

Despite the latest Google expose, the California-based company has becoming increasingly compliant to government requests to block purportedly sensitive information — including images of Tibet, military installations and even a General Electric research plant — according to a report prepared by the Open Source Center for the Bush Administration’s Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and reports circulated online about areas Google has blocked or blurred. [The bold thing to illustrate how beautiful names can misrepresent the complete opposite]
[...]
Google also censors certain sites in India. India may also be taking measures to hide their facilities from satellites. According to the report, “India’s army announced that it had taken evasive measures against the ‘intrusive photographs of strategic installations.’”
Google sometimes uses older images to replace existing ones to erase, say, the movement of troops in Iraq. After a January 2007 report that terrorists were attacking British bases based on Google Earth imagery, Google replaced images of these sites with photographs taken before the war. The report also claims that al Qaeda militants used Google Earth to target oil facilities in Yemen.

Of course it doesn’t. It is the co-creator of the internet, mighty and powerful, once you get a company like that, you are allowed to, you don’t just do what you want. So could this be a media stunt? Maybe. What else can this Atlantis be? It can be the country/island of Atlantis, or a part of it. But think of a large company made by two students, totally innocent and not very efficient in terms of working smoothly. For sure, Google doesn’t have its own submarines or boats to take pictures of the oceanic floor. Worse, no private companies are allowed to. Oceanic floors is a private military playground, where subs hold races and sometimes miss a hard right. The intel for this Google Ocean stuff comes from the military. These guys sure enough photographed this region like hell. And I mean like hell. Because nowhere else on the Oceanic floor you see this amazing grids of that size. Nowhere. And again following Richard C. Hoagland’s research methods, the answer to this question must be: the lie is different at every level. Google is very convinced this is not Atlantis, just because the explanation that this grid is because of sonar paths. The journalists are very convinced Google tells them the truth, and go with the trend of the last decade: don’t ask painful questions. And so are you: don’t challenge the media to ask more about this. But the source knows something we don’t. Just like the Face On Mars was over and over rephotographed for an object to be merely a trick of light and shadow, so did some submarines had to quit their racing stuff for quite some time to go photographing this region – only this region.

The Country
After some computer graphic enhancements (we used Adobe Photoshop), we came up with the picture show on top of this page. Would this too be nice trick of light and shadows? Of course, this looks anything like sonar paths. Note:

• If these ’sonar lines’ were in fact data processing artifacts, they would be consequent throughout the whole raster. Instead they stop where the ‘presumably real ocean floor textures start’.
• The ’shadow and highlight pattern’ matches the ’sonar artifacts’ with the oceanic floor structure.
• There appear to be ‘pyramidical’ structures in this grid, which are somewhat distinct from the other oceanic floor attributes.
• These lines are much more like a giant labyrinth than modern army submarine or boat scans – which should be much more parallel to each other and with the same distance in between each line.
• Furthermore it is awkward to see these lines only there and virtually nowhere else on the large oceanic floor. If this undersea artificial and heavily eroded structure would be officially recognized, it would lead unavoidably to the enforce the evidence of a previous world cataclysm. Surely that isn’t possible, because we must be the brightest civilization, with a fossil fuel collapsing economy, clean energy, dead scientists, open minded science and politics that are by no means influenced by religion.
• The lines – canyons would be better – are approximately between 500 m and 1500m in width. According to Google’s elevation meter the ‘canyons’ are not at all related to the depth below sea level.
• The size of this thing is half the size of Belgium. If one was to look at such a remains of a country that size, eroded after presumably 10000 years, what could it be then? It could be the remains of an advanced water distribution network, huge lanes for traffic or subway system. Ridiculous? It is only ridiculous if your mind is limited by what others tell and told you is possible and what is not. And yes, we need scientific confirmation and investigation, but is Google get’s away with this so easy, the scientific investigations, if any, are surely not going to be mainstream.
• Final remark: when one is doing sonar surveys on the ocean, why make it yourself difficult by not sailing parallel to the equator? As you can see in the picture below – just using simple Google Earth again – the sonar raster is rotated with an angle to the Earth’s grid lines. We leave it to Richard Hoagland to claim that the angle is 19,5°..
  

The East Side
After a few more ‘ocean floor walks’ we found another ‘country’ about half the size of the one depicted above. This other ’sonar artifact’ is located about 300 km East of the first artifact, and looks little different. The raster is that of possible sonar scans, they are in equal distance from each other, they ignore topographical differences at the ocean floor and can be found throughout the whole Northern American East coast too. This is not the same. These lines have strict 90° and 45° geometry and are possibly what Google calls sonar artifacts due to data processing. As far as our knowledge goes, bathymetric charting is a quite precise technology. But ok, Google are amateurs, need five years of Gmail beta before being sure of stuff, yea ok. Google must have had trouble with processing the data, though many insiders would agree this is still a very nonsense explanation. But apparently these lines appear everywhere in front of coasts. Again, these lines have different characteristics and are distinct from those of our first processed image. Here comes the processed image of the ‘real sonar lines’, just 300km west of the first image.

Conclusion
We’re not saying this is Atlantis, we’re saying Google’s explanation is at the least cheap, in fact very doubtful. With such a reaction, this maybe-important discovery will become the knowledge to the happy few. If it were indeed sonar lines, this would be the only depicted part of the ocean so far, which would make Google Oceans an non-educational tool to say the least.

Please post a comment if you have more. (*sigh* Why didn’t we just blog something short like this?)