Explore The World’s Most Detailed Map Of The Seafloor, Released Today

Researchers today published the most elaborated map of the ocean floor ever produced . Data collected by satellites and remote sensing instruments were used to create a model at least double as accurate as previous maps , revealing thousands of previously unmapped seafloor feature in the process . And best of all , you could explore the maps for yourself !

Much of what we know about the sea storey ’s topology we know from data collected by multibeam echo sounder systems . It is estimated that these sonar organisation – which have to be lugged back and forth across the ocean ’s open by ships to acquire soundings of the seafloor deep beneath them – have left a staggering 90 % of the bass - sea bottom uncharted .

Now , researchers led by geophysicist David Sandwell , of Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego , California , have useddata collected from satellite - based radar altimetersto fill in Brobdingnagian swaths of missing seafloor . What ’s unbelievable is that these satellites map the ocean deep not by rake the seafloor , but by repeatedly scan the waters ’ surface . Correcting for waves and tides creates a picture of ocean - surface topography that reflect features of the seafloor far below . “ A seamount , for illustration , exerts a gravitative pull , and warps the sea surface outward , ” say Sandwell , in an interview withScience News , “ so we can map the bottom of the ocean indirectly , using ocean - surface topography . ”

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So what has the fresh scan flex up?Here ’s Science News ’ Carolyn Gramling :

Among the raw features they ’re now able-bodied to discover , Sandwell read , are yard of previously unsung seamounts between 1000 and 2000 meters tall scatter the ocean floor . They also discovered an 800 - kilometer - long now - extinct ( i.e. , no longer actively spreading ) ridge in the South Atlantic Ocean that form after Africa and North America rifted apart . The team also report the exact location of a now - out seafloor distribute rooftree , a zona where two architectonic plate lead off pulling apart 180 million years ago to form the deep washstand that became the Gulf of Mexico . “ That was a surprise to me — you’d think everyone would recognise everything about the Gulf because it ’s so well - studied , ” he says . “ Of course , the great unwashed sleep with it open from seafloor spreading , but they did n’t know just where the ridge and transform mistake were . ” Those features were so deeply buried by sediment that the gravity sign were passing faint .

Also cool : Sandwell ’s team , in addition to publish its finding in the later issue ofScience , has put its chart online in the form ofseveral interactive maps(overlapys can also be downloaded for navigation in Google Earth ) . Here ’s the squad ’s vertical gravity gradient map :

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