Atlantis still missing, says Google techs

Late last night this blog joined many other outlets in passing along the word that the Google Earth application had discovered something weird on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean west of Africa. And a lot of people were quick to suggest that perhaps this might be the sunken remains of mythic Atlantis.

Already we have an answer: no, it's not.

According to the eggheads at Google, the odd grid array is a visual artifact from the sonar process that spawned the undersea maps. In this case, the lines are caused by the paths of the boats on the surface as they went back and forth taking sonar measurements of the ocean floor.

So no Atlantis this time. But I'll bet Lemuria and Mu are still out there somewhere :-)

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Has Google Earth found Atlantis?

The latest version of Google Earth, which has a new oceanographic feature, has found a very odd feature on the Atlantic floor hundreds of miles northwest of the Canary Islands. Here's the screengrab that I took of it, including the coordinates...

It's said to be as large as Wales, and sits beneath three and a half miles of water. Some are saying that Google Earth might have stumbled upon the location of fabled Atlantis. Interestingly, the site does rest in the spot beyond the Strait of Gibraltar where Plato said Atlantis rose and fell.

My hunch is that this is going to turn out to be some natural feature on the eastern flanks of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. But it is plenty intriguing that it looks so regular and organized, almost like the layout of a city.

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