The bottom of the ocean was quite recently completely unexplored and was something like the Dark Side of the Moon. Meanwhile, an international team of scientists is trying to measure and study ocean depths as widely as possible. The study is carried out mainly with the help of satellite data, after which a diagram and a map are created. About the latter, in fact, and speech. In order to gain knowledge of global geology without cartography, there is no way, and now, a relief map of the oceans is ready.
A hundred years ago, the only way to get information about the bottom was to throw a piece of lead overboard and watch the waves in the water, this approach guaranteed a very approximate depth measurement. Until today, scientists from all over the world have come up with a wide variety of technologies to study the seas and oceans, only a hundred years of development has led to detailed, not too studied, but results.
Using data from ESA's CryoSat-2 and NASA/CNES' Jason-1 satellites, as well as results from old space missions, scientists at the University of Sydney have now taken the "contours" of the seafloor. They used the data to map the Earth's gravitational field by studying how the orbits of the satellites changed and from that deduced what the sea floor looked like.
The idea is based on the fact that the Earth's gravitational field is non-uniform, as well as materials in the Earth's crust, respectively, materials from the Earth's crust are stretched behind gravity.
Such changes in the earth's surface distort the sea level and height above it. And the combined data from the orbit, analyzed by the computer, showed exactly how the changes occur and how they are displayed on the surface of the earth under water.
At the moment, it is possible to draw up a map with the expansion of objects up to 5 kilometers. Despite such gigantic figures, the map is still the most accurate and detailed. The places of the densest concentration of the crustal material - mountains and ridges, places of tectonic collisions are highlighted in red and orange, various depressions and trenches are highlighted in blue, and modern continents and islands are marked in black.
According to a team from the Scripps Oceanographic Institution and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this map already provides a new look at the ocean floor. The team drew attention to this when studying an area in the Indian Ocean, it is the size of West Virginia and appeared as a result of the collision of two tectonic plates, the Antarctic and Asian, about 47 million years ago.
NASA says the new map will improve understanding of the movement of tectonic plates and will be able to predict earthquakes. What can we say about the fact that the map can greatly facilitate the management of surface and underwater transport.
Atlantic Ocean- the second largest ocean after the Pacific Ocean. It contains 25% of the world's water. The average depth is 3,600 m. The maximum depth is in the Puerto Rico trench - 8,742 m. The ocean area is 91 million square meters. km.
general information
The ocean arose as a result of the split of the supercontinent Pangea» into two large parts, which subsequently formed into modern continents.
The Atlantic Ocean has been known to man since ancient times. Mentioning the ocean, which " called the Atlantic“, can be found in the records of the 3rd c. BC. The name probably originated from the legendary missing mainland " Atlantis«.
True, it is not clear what territory it designated, because in ancient times people were limited in their means of transportation by sea.
Relief and islands
A distinctive feature of the Atlantic Ocean is a very small number of islands, as well as a complex bottom topography, which forms many pits and gutters. The deepest among them are the Puerto Rico Trench and the South Sandwich Trench, which are over 8 km deep.
Earthquakes and volcanoes have a great influence on the structure of the bottom, the greatest activity of tectonic processes is observed in the equatorial zone.
Volcanic activity in the ocean has been going on for 90 million years. The height of many underwater volcanoes exceeds 5 km. The largest and most famous are found in the Puerto Rico and Yuno Sandwich trenches, as well as on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Climate
The large meridional extent of the ocean from north to south explains the diversity of climatic conditions on the surface of the ocean. In the equatorial zone, there are slight temperature fluctuations throughout the year and an average of +27 degrees. The exchange of water with the Arctic Ocean also has a huge impact on ocean temperature. From the north, tens of thousands of icebergs drift into the Atlantic Ocean, reaching almost tropical waters.
The Gulf Stream, the largest current on the planet, is born off the southeastern coast of North America. Water consumption per day is 82 million cubic meters, which is 60 times higher than the flow of all rivers. The width of the current reaches 75 km. wide, and the depth is 700 m. The speed of the current varies between 6-30 km / h. The Gulf Stream carries warm waters, the temperature of the upper layer of the current is 26 degrees.
In the area of The Newfoundland Gulf Stream meets the cold wall of the Labrador Current. The mixing of waters creates ideal conditions for the reproduction of microorganisms in the upper layers. Best known in this regard Large Newfoundland barrel, which is a source of fishing for fish such as cod, herring and salmon.
Flora and fauna
The Atlantic Ocean is characterized by an abundance of biomass with a relatively poor species composition in the northern and southern margins. The greatest species diversity is observed in the equatorial zone.
Of the fish, the most common are the families of nanoteniy and white-blooded pikes. Large mammals are most widely represented: cetaceans, seals, fur seals, etc. The amount of plankton is insignificant, which causes whales to migrate to feeding areas to the north or to temperate latitudes, where it is more abundant.
Many places in the Atlantic Ocean have been and continue to be intensive fishing grounds. Earlier development of the ocean has led to the fact that hunting for mammals has been common here for a long time. This has reduced the number of some animal species compared to the Pacific and Indian Oceans. 
Plants are represented by a wide range of green, brown and red algae. The famous Sargasso form the Sargasso Sea, popular in books and interesting stories.
December 14th, 2016
Blogger 555alex555 studied at leisure Google maps, in particular the seabed, and found strange images. What's this? Shooting artifacts? Feature of sonar? Or are these real shots of the bottom?Moreover, it can be found in almost any part of the oceans.If so, what is it? The blogger asks readers a question - how can these formations be rationally explained?
Let's try to think about this together.
1.
https://www.google.ru/maps/@20.8546126,-1 55.0647782,36098m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=ru
We discussed not so long ago, but these objects are not like this story.
2.
https://www.google.ru/maps/@20.2524245,-1 54.799597,35846m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=ru
We had a conversation about- also does not look like these formations.
https://www.google.ru/maps/@18.5342253,-1 54.2985031,30047m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=ru
What other versions will you have?
4.
https://www.google.ru/maps/@17.1439872,-1 55.8918893,35656m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=ru
5.
https://www.google.ru/maps/@18.8294194,-1 56.9540773,35472m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=ru
6.
https://www.google.ru/maps/@20.7916909,-1 60.0900944,35737m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=ru
7.
With the help of Google Ocean, users can study the relief of the seabed, view ocean attractions, find out the temperature of the water and the direction of the currents. The map also includes coral reefs and shipwrecks.
Homeland of the Atlanteans?
Very soon, Google Ocean brought the first sensation. On February 20, the British tabloid The Sun reported that aeronautical engineer Bernie Bamford had discovered a very strange object in the Atlantic Ocean using Google Ocean. Approximately a thousand kilometers off the northwest coast of Africa, near the Canary Islands, Bamford saw a rectangle with an area of about 20 thousand square kilometers. The British The Sun clarified that the object is the size of Wales, and the Russian TV channel Zvezda wrote in its message that the find is comparable in area to the Moscow Region, although the Moscow Region is twice the size of Wales.
Inside, the rectangle, located at a depth of about 5.5 kilometers, is streaked with lines intersecting at right angles. The exact coordinates of the find are 31 degrees 15 minutes 15.53 seconds north latitude and 24 degrees 15 minutes 15.30 seconds west longitude. See a strange object
According to The Sun, the find could be nothing more than Atlantis. The large rectangle is the walls, the network of lines inside is the streets. The newspaper does not draw attention to the fact that the size of the ancient city (if this is it) is 10 times larger than London. After all, the Atlanteans were the children of Poseidon, and with the help of the gods, you can build something else.
For advice, The Sun turned to "head of historical archeology programs at the State University of New York" Charles Orser (Charles Orser). "One of the world's leading experts on Atlantis" stated that the suspicious object is located in one of the most likely places for the existence of a mythical city (or island or even continent).
If you turn to the website of the State University of New York, then in the list of its employees there is no person named Charles Orser. Instead, historical archaeologist Charles Orser works at the University of Illinois and the New York State Museum at Albany. He is indeed considered an expert on the search for Atlantis. In an earlier interview with a National Geographic journalist, Orser noted: "Pick any place on the map, and someone will say that Atlantis was here."
However, in theories about the location of the homeland of the Atlanteans, the territory in the vicinity of the Strait of Gibraltar is indeed mentioned more often than other places.
The news of the discovery of Atlantis instantly spread across the Internet. A little over an hour after Lenta.Ru published a message about the find, on Wikimapia (WikiMapia service is a "symbiosis" of Google Maps and Wikipedia, in which users can comment on any objects presented on Google maps), slightly modified quotes from him.
A matter of technology
But they did not have time to properly discuss the amazing discovery on the Web. Hours after the article was published in The Sun, a Google spokesperson disappointed the sensationalists. Laura Scott explained that the strange object is a technical artifact that arose from the nature of the collection of topographic data.
Information about the bottom topography is obtained using sonars, or echo sounders, installed on ships. Sonar sends a sound signal into the depths, which passes through the water column until it hits an obstacle. The sound wave bounces off the obstruction and returns to the top where it is picked up by the sonar receiver. From the return time of the signal, you can calculate the distance to the object. Having carried out many measurements in one place, topographers get an idea of the bottom topography.
Modern echo sounders take measurements several dozen times per second. As Scott explained, the straight lines of the found Atlantis correspond to the trajectories of the movement of ships at the time when the sonars are turned on.
Ie again. From the satellite, the relief of the bottom of the seas and oceans is not visible. Therefore, bathymetric maps were used in compiling the relief map of the sea bottom. The stripes are the path of a ship that has been traveling with its multibeam echo sounder on in order to obtain bathymetric data. But after receiving digital data on this profile, they were not processed, but immediately loaded into the database. Therefore, we see data on this profile that are more accurate in terms of depth measurements, but since they are not processed, a lot of "rebounds".
The news of the closure of Atlantis caused as much response in the blogs as the first message. Bloggers are divided into two parts. Some spoke in the sense that "we knew it, it's all fiction." Some of the skeptics even changed the comments on Wikimapia. Representatives of the second camp wrote in their online diaries that Google does not want to recognize the great discovery and, in fact, they found Atlantis. Bloggers who believe in the existence of Atlantis have noticed that ships cannot turn at right angles and that similar artifacts have not been seen in other parts of the ocean.
Scientists have created a new map of the seabed. It turned out to be so detailed that it seems as if someone evaporated all the water of the oceans and took a corresponding photograph. But in fact, amazing accuracy was achieved using satellite data. The new sea depth map is the highest resolution gravity model ever created for the oceans and will help explorers for years to come.
An international team led by oceanographer David Sandwell of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla (California, USA) created a map using data from two satellites: Cryosat-2 of the European Space Agency and Jason-1. joint project of the American space agency NASA and the French space agency CNES.
Both satellites were created to study our planet from space, but initially their goals were different. The Cryosat 2 mission was sent while Jason 1 monitored sea level changes (before being "shut down" in 2013 after 12 years of operation). Both probes carry radar altimeters, instruments that measure the exact distance between the satellite and the Earth's surface (or the ocean floor).
New gravity data give clear picture of ocean floor landscape
(Illustration by Scripps Institution of Oceanography).
The devices measured tiny changes in the level of the ocean surface, taking into account the effect of the error of temporal phenomena (for example, waves and tides). Thus, it was revealed how the ocean responds to the gravitational pull of underwater features, such as mountain ranges. In essence, the probes mapped the surface of the sea as a cast of the sea floor: a seamount, for example, deforms the surface of the sea with its gravitational pull.
"Over the years, we've only had two main opportunities to get this kind of data," says Sandwell. In 1997, we systematized this data and compiled the first map of the seabed, but the gaps in the study of the ocean floor were about 90%. The new information improved our map by at least a factor of two: now our data is much more accurate."
When compiling the old map, scientists were able to detect underwater volcanoes - mountains that rise more than two kilometers from the seabed. In the new work, they managed to identify at least 20 thousand previously unknown seamounts 1.5-2 kilometers high. They are scattered over relatively young regions of the seabed.
Model of a triple junction (meeting of three oceanic plates) in the Indian Ocean
(Illustration by David Sandwell, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego).
The map also allowed a closer look at the sedimentary rocks of the seabed. In the northern part of the Indian Ocean, an underwater ridge was discovered that passes through the Bay of Bengal - a sedimentary cover 8 kilometers thick (that is, it can be compared with the Himalayan mountains in height).
Depth map
For hundreds of years, the only way to measure ocean depth was with a weight, usually lead, with a thin rope. Not only was this method time-consuming, it was highly inaccurate. Ship drift or water currents could pull the rope away at an angle, making the depth measurement inaccurate. Then the ropes were replaced by echo sounders (sonars). Bathymetric studies have shown that the topography of the ocean floor is very diverse. Plains, canyons, active and extinct volcanoes, as well as mountain ranges are hidden under water.
In 1978, an experimental satellite was launched to study the oceans. One of the surprising discoveries then was the fact that the surface of the ocean is not “smooth”, but rises and falls in different areas. When the surface of the ocean was mapped, it turned out that the dips corresponded to depressions in the sea floor, and the rises corresponded to sea mountains and mountain ranges. Over time, technical capabilities have increased. Satellites appeared and detailed maps of the depths of the entire oceans were compiled.
The reason for these falls and rises of the ocean surface is in the Earth's gravitational field. Here is a gravity model created by the GRACE satellite:
As a result of the painstaking work of the satellites, other interesting maps appeared. This wonderful infographic visualizes the deepest places in the world. There is also Lake Baikal, which can be compared with other deep lakes in the world.
But finally, all the secrets of the topography of the ocean were discovered with the help of satellites such as Jason-1 and Jason-2.
Satellite altimeters measure the sea surface height and other features of the ocean surface. Using the microwaves they emit, they measure the height of the water in the ocean, help make weather maps, predict the formation of hurricanes and observe the level of the oceans.
To create just such a map, it took a consolidated knowledge of bathymetry and topography of the seabed. Here you can see the relief features of the earth's surface under water, and on the graph you can find out the depth of the world's oceans in meters.