Weird undersea find on Google Maps

[Jhonie]

https://www.google.com/maps/place/28...x0:0x0!5m1!1e4

I have no idea what this is, any ideas? Looks like giant tubes undersea. They look rather big for lava tubes. If anyone wants to post a screen print that would be great. I have no idea how.

Here we go.

[Matt P]

Interesting that the "tubes" continue on for a great distance and intersect with others. Also appears to be a great deal of the image blurred, perhaps on purpose?

Matt

[Olaf]

Wow, that structures are huge: > 500 m in Diameter.
Also the diameter is fairly constant across the extension of the structure.

[Kryztian]

When I examine this through Google Earth, there seems to be incredible depth around these structures, up to 13,000 feet, while some depths nearby are only 900 feet. Am guessing these are ridges could be 2 miles high.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Jhonie (here)
https://www.google.com/maps/place/28...x0:0x0!5m1!1e4

I have no idea what this is, any ideas? Looks like giant tubes undersea. They look rather big for lava tubes. If anyone wants to post a screen print that would be great. I have no idea how.

No problem.
(Interesting! See the 5 km scale on the bottom right. Whatever these are, they're huge.)

[Hervé]

Rather than tubes, these look like canyons to me:

[Nature Spirit]

I hope they're filled with chocolate.....

[Meggings]

This image is the further extension southward of these tubes off the Baja peninsula shown above.

Attachment 30565

[Bob]

Welcome to Artifact Generation 101 !

What one is 'seeing' is the wonderful feature called Image Enhancement, to make a lovely picture appear out of 'nothing'. Image enhancement engines allow one to take some squiggles and exaggerate the features to let you see absolutely "stunning" images

Things like bent roads and buildings appear (y'all recall the spat with the google MAPS bending roads and bridges when navigating around?)

The source location in the OP is re-displayed below using Google Earth Pro, with different settings of the image engine..

First one is FLAT, or as close to 'reality' as the data from 'soundings' provides:

This next one has MINIMAL enhancement:

Now for Enhancement turned UP all the way !

Weeeee what amazing earth we live on? Hey is that Lemuria ?

Notice subsequently as enhancement is increased, the ISLAND bends and falls off into the SEA ! (Must be earthshifts happening, eh?)

Face on Mars anyone? (Image IRIS enhancement software was used on that one.. as I happen to have that professional image software program, and guess what? One can put the face of Pluto on Pluto with it! (or a face on Mars) or anything with tweaking slight bumps and valleys in the image, or exaggerating contrast changes, and fool oneself into seeing whatever one wants..)

Seems to me that if one is interested in exploring a great modeler to see what it is like making very realistic images: http://pixologic.com/zbrush/features/ZBrush4R7/ Enhanced images and the tweaking thereof on powerful computers with great software lets reality be tweaked into whatever.

Image Enhancement 'truth' is very very subjective, and the operator using the enhancement software to "improve features" (read, "remove noise") has to remove bias, to get as much image 'truth' as possible.. Thing is, removing noise with narrow bandwidth filters can at times actually create it by augmenting what is not really there.

[Jhonie]

Thanks Bob for your explaination. Makes me wonder what is there to be enhanced?

[Olaf]

Sorry Bob. The features are present in the very first shot.
The "image enhancement" you showed in your post produces only a (mis)interpretation of the already present feature, when it tries to interpret them as shadows and lights from possible 3D structures. Nevertheless, the feature is there.

Do you think the walls/rods are an artifact from putting together image slices, as we already had some of this kind in Google earth?
Do you think, it is a result of image sharpening of a line (can be interpreted as some kind of halos on both sides as a result of oversharpening)?
Could it be walls of lava between tectonic plates, that have moved?

[A Voice from the Mountains]

Google gets this technology from US military hand-me-downs if I recall correctly, and they have been shown to change the way anomalies look in the past, to make them more difficult to see. This could be a real anomaly or underwater base that Google has intentionally fudged to keep too much detail from getting out. I've heard more than once that the US military has bases on and beneath islands off the West Coast, such as under Catalina Island.

The reason the surrounding area is blurrier is ostensibly because they didn't send their ships which scan the ocean floor over those neighboring regions, but like I said, they've blurred or pixelated areas before, after previously having sharper images, so who knows what the real situation is.

This feature looks like it's near the edge of the continental shelf, or at least a large drop-off from higher elevation area into a deeper sea floor. So in page times this area was probably all above water, until the drop off of the nearby mountainside where you see a stretch of flat sea bed. That flat area that extends down the length of the shelf edge was probably a beach in former times.

I have no idea what this could be but it looks very interesting.


Also if you look at these features, they run at about 90 degree angles to the natural ridge features below them. That is not something you see real mountain ridges do.

[Pam]

Posted by Hervé (here)
Rather than tubes, these look like canyons to me:

Now that you bring it up, I see what you mean. It could be either way. The symmetry of the lower tube/canyon smacks of being man made. But, who knows. I tried to find aerial photos of lava tube formations with no luck.

[Bob]

Never said the lava flow or plate upthrust from the Canyon that Herve' pointed out wasn't there, just that Google Maps turns on "enhancement" which creates artifacts and distorts images. It looks like lava flows and a set of canyons. It looks like plates pulled apart.

Thing is why is one ASSUMING that the bathymetry data that Google used is accurate? Anybody actually take a look at the original source bathymetry data? Or that Google accurately rendered that data into a displayable image database? I wouldn't make that assumption.

Bathymetry: "Bathymetry is the study of underwater depth of lake or ocean floors. In other words, bathymetry is the underwater equivalent to hypsometry or topography." see http://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/viewers/bathymetry/

(FYI - I just took an image voyage to Mars using Earth Pro and gee I found Jezus ! and another face right next to each other, all with turning on "enhancement" and processing for lights and darks afterwards. Maybe I will start a thread called FACE ON MARS-2 the sequel).

One simply can not trust using google or any other "enhancer" for "guaranteed flat true objects and features" with the enhancement features on.. Artifacts are enhanced. And one can imagine whatever they want . Folks need to go back to the original data (see the bottom of the graphic to see the source) and look at that in a good GIS viewer (if that is the format)..

I have NO trust in getting accurate "features" reliably presented. All it is good for IMHO it to show pretty pictures which later will require ACCURATE image rendering from reliable data, either LIDAR on land, or accurate bathymetry underwater.

Re: Weird undersea find on Google Maps
Olaf says Sorry Bob. The features are present in the very first shot.
The "image enhancement" you showed in your post produces only a (mis)interpretation of the already present feature, when it tries to interpret them as shadows and lights from possible 3D structures. Nevertheless, the feature is there.

Do you think the walls/rods are an artifact from putting together image slices, as we already had some of this kind in Google earth?
Do you think, it is a result of image sharpening of a line (can be interpreted as some kind of halos on both sides as a result of oversharpening)?
Could it be walls of lava between tectonic plates, that have moved?

The feature enhancement is ludicrous. Humorous at best.

Ref: LIDAR - http://www.coast.noaa.gov/dataregist...o/coastallidar
"Lidar (also written LIDAR, LiDAR or LADAR) is a remote sensing technology that measures distance by illuminating a target with a laser and analyzing the reflected light. Although thought by some to be an acronym of Light Detection And Ranging, the term lidar was actually created as a portmanteau of "light" and "radar"."

[Bob]

Want to see more distortions produced by Google's "version of their imagineering" (sorry Disney) see this:

http://www.postcards-from-google-earth.com/

This one is also hilarious !

Must be the sun has been overheating with this one, look how google has shown us this road has MELTED !! OMG !!! WTF, how could we have missed this conspiracy, earth/sun melting roads issues OMG..

COMMON -- stop trusting databases to give accurate rendtions especially with 'software' that can take a bit of data and spin it any way it's algorithms tell it..

The point in the OP was to question what is being seen. A GOOGLE MAPS enhanced distorted set of imagery, based on what appears to be lava flows, tectonic movement, and a set of canyons all exaggerated by the "features" built-into the google product.

[Hervé]

If those structures are actually showing positive relief, then they could be underwater dikes:

Magmatic dikes radiating from West Spanish Peak, Colorado, U.S.





Shiprock Mountain (an extinct volcano from about 30 million years ago) in New Mexico, and the southern dike that extends several miles from it.

[Fairy Friend]

I don't like the enhancement either. It makes it look like the island is below the water to me. And we all know islands are above the water. I'm leaning toward fault lines. Either way, it is a huge contrast in elevation.

[Bob]

Magma = lava..

Lava cooling and upflowing in a canyon making for a pillow/snake like structure..

Reminds me of the stuff off Hawaii:

ribboning

Eastern Pacific RISE: http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/201...arth-s-climate

Tolstoy's study at the East Pacific Rise spreading ridge, offshore western South America, found connections between ice age cycles and these seafloor corrugations that extend back 800,000 years. The bands of thicker and thinner crust correspond to 100,000-year ice age cycles — the most powerful of Earth's freeze-and-thaw rhythms. When glaciers expanded and sea level dropped, more lava oozed from the ridge volcanoes, Tolstoy discovered. (When magma breaches the surface, it is called lava.) The thinnest crust, formed when eruptions slowed, matches up with eras of higher sea level. The findings were published today (Feb. 5) in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

(East Pacific Rise, above)

Here's a couple more bathymetry images without google's distortion, the features ARE long where the plates have interacted:

Those are normal bottom features, not hidden cities Sorry Lemurians can't use a hydrophone to phone home just yet..

Mid Ocean ridge formation (from magma upwellings) - animation



and



These places move, and this sits on the "ring of fire" as well.. volcanic action in other words.

I think it's great looking for unusual features, "discovery", solving what is causing the features is where the mystery story begins. These "features" are sitting on a spot where there is the "ring of fire" and active plate movement.. And the geometry may look fascinating.

So is this:

illustrates the type of ridging which happens is similar when the liquid cools and the formation "grows"

This type shows how the ridges appear on the "snake" formation:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=oYytdZuV47M

[A Voice from the Mountains]

Posted by Bob (here)
Want to see more distortions produced by Google's "version of their imagineering" (sorry Disney) see this:

http://www.postcards-from-google-earth.com/

This one is also hilarious !

It looks pretty obvious what is going on here.

You have the ground-level, and then you have structures being built up in the air over top of them, like the bridges and roads you showed. Google's software cannot distinguish two different height levels (that would take more sophisticated 3D modeling), so they make the bridges or roads conform to the ground level. It may also be possible for the ground level below to be raised up to the level of these bridges and roads.

[PHennessey]

Greetings, everyone.

Please remember to take these images with a grain of salt. 99% of the ocean floor is not mapped in detail. Google amalgamates data from many, many different sources, and most, if not all, artifacts are simply a scanning overlap or other trivial aspect of deep-water sonar scanning. It's impossible, and a bad idea, to infer anything from Google Maps regarding the ocean floor. It's fine to do research on land, where most of our imagery comes from, but the ocean floor is very, very poorly mapped. If you want to know what's down there, you have to find sonar data from other sources.