The View From Above: Could this be the lost city of Atlantis?

Friday, May 29, 2009

Could this be the lost city of Atlantis?

31°29'1.36"N 24°23'48.75"W

This underwater feature can be found about 430 miles south of the island of Santa Maria in the Portugese Autonomous Region of the Azores, west of North Africa. It appears to be an almost perfect rectangle, with streets and city blocks neatly laid out. There are even what appear to me major roads leading to outlying suburbs and existing above-sea level population centers. Google issued a statement pooh-poohing the idea, saying, "a statement from Google read. "What users are seeing is an artifact 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." My response to that would be, then why is this phenomenon only visible in this tiny patch of ocean?

Read Google's Official Response, which is actually pretty convincing.

1 comment:

AnonymousAugust 25, 2010 at 10:15 PM
There has been quite a lot of sonar research in that area and there are several sets of higher resolution scans, some of which are available online, that show nothing unusual in that location. As far as underwater imaging goes, the Google Earth data seems to be the only data in which that grid makes an appearance.
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Why "View From Above"

I have an unquenchable thirst for exploration and mysteries. But that isn't the only reason for "View From Above." This blog exists primarily thanks to the despicable ignorance and laziness of the many, many people who will post a picture of some anomaly and simply make guesses about it, rather than do five minutes worth of research. I can't count the many times I've seen aerial pictures of "UFOs parked in a row on the beach" (They're beach umbrellas, you dork!) or questions like, "What's this aircraft doing sitting in the middle of the desert?" (It's a military firing range. They use junk aircraft as targets. Duh!) The unwillingness on the part of most people to do even a minimal amount of research just boggles the mind.

Another pet peeve of mine is the practice of posting an interesting site without a precise location. I don't know if it's laziness, oversight, or a desire to hoard information, but it's irritating as hell to me. That's why mosts of my posts will always include coordinates to the site.

I hope you'll enjoy perusing the sites I've listed. I can't take credit for being the first to "find" most of them, but I will do my best to let you know what I find out about them!

Michael Makai