On 1/19/09, Francisco_J._Marcano posted the following question:

This began a long thread involved with finding the reason for the strange markings. This is an image of most of it:



But it is only an image from a temporary cache. While moving a short post asking the same question, the poltergeists that have been plaguing this forum struck again. "Ffffftthhppp" and it was gone...

EDIT: I could find no more of the original thread than the image I was able to grab from my computer and a part of it from Internet Archives Wayback machine. Somehow Francisco has found the old posts from the thread and has reposted them. You can find the archive here. Thanks Francisco!!!

So because there was so much interest in it, I'll try as best I can to rebuild what was lost.

Francisco's coordinates took us here off the northwest coast of Africa:



At first I thought they were some sort of anomaly in the imagery, but later thought they might be traces of sonar tracks used to "see" into the ocean depths. A bit of googling the web led me to this PDF file entitled:

Quote:

THE GEOLOGY OF THE MADEIRA ABYSSAL PLAIN
FURTHER STUDIES RELEVANT TO ITS SUITABILITY FOR
RADIOACTIVE WASTE DISPOSAL

On page 54 of the document is the following image of sonar tracks. Not all of the tracks show up on the GE bathymetry, but enough do to line things up very nicely for a match.



Once the general survey was completed, they focused on one area and surveyed that in greater detail.

Their main criteria for their needs was:



I am uncertain whether this disposal of nuclear waste was ever carried out, but I believe the project was abandoned.

For more information about how the ocean basin topography was obtained see this post.

Click on the attachment to see how the image fits the deep ocean sonar tracks. Not all are included in the Google Ocean image layer, but enough are to match thing up very nicely. Use the opacity slider at the bottom of "Places" to fade the picture of the tracks in and out.

Hello Hill,
This is the second time that GE forum cache data disappears.

As you have predicted, Atlantis news are rising:

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2009/02/20/Google_Atlantis_image_was_sonar_data/UPI-27691235142455/

Cheers!

Francisco M.

Google LatLong Blog has posted a nice complete explanation here.

Quote:

Atlantis? No, it Atlant-isn't.
Monday, February 23, 2009 at 2:55 PM
[Note: Last week we saw some interesting speculation that Atlantis had been found in Google Earth. As much as we'd love for that to be the case, there is a scientific explanation for the odd markings found on the seafloor. We've invited two of the scientists who gathered the data that appears in Google Earth to answer some questions that came up. - Ed.]

Maybe this is old hat, but I got a kick out of spotting what looks like "DT 8/8 O" centered at 0 00'53.14"N 94 49'49.29"E. Those wacky Atlanteans!

This has been covered before. The lead investigator who generated the bathymetric data is David T. Sandwell of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Look again and see if the initials aren't DTS/SIO.

See this thread for more information about the letters.

I've seen three separate instances where the initials DTS/SIO are engraved at the bottom of the ocean:

THEY'RE GONE!!!

I wonder if Scripps Institute (or Google Earth) got tired of the controversy?

Indeed they are. The only evidence they were there is a faint rectangular area. The image in the attachment is one I captured earlier to show what they looked like. Move the opacity slider to make them vanish again.

Oddly artifical-appearing subsea structures covering some 6400 square miles.
This can't possibly be Atlantis, though, since Atlantis was destroyed when the Atlantic Ocean re-flooded the Mediterranean Sea subsequent to the last ice age.

During the ice age, the world's sea levels were low enough that 'The Med' was cut off from the Atlantic and ended up dwindling to a small sea. People settled on what was then dry land well below sea level. As the glaciers melted, raising the ocean's levels, what was then the Gibraltar Isthmus became the Straights of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean Sea rose to match the world's sea level, flooding millions of people out. This is the genesis of The Flood myths which are part of many global religions.

So, if you want to find Atlantis, you'll need to focus your search somewhere inside the confines of the Mediterranean Sea.

Now you know.