Business
Atlantis still lost, sea lines explained
Weird lines seen in Google Earth's ocean imagery are not the Lost City of Atlantis, after all. How disappointing.
![zd-defaultauthor-richard-koman.jpg](https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/resize/74c74723693e876b8e4a3c80bfe1d96dccb1a969/2014/12/04/95f2358c-7b6f-11e4-9a74-d4ae52e95e57/zd-defaultauthor-richard-koman.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&frame=1&height=192&width=192)
![](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_7ZYqYi4xigk/SaMkb4Mb71I/AAAAAAAACXU/xhfF1jxxxEQ/s400/Picture+6.png)
By measuring the time it takes for sound to travel from a ship to the sea floor and back, you can get an idea of how far away the sea floor is. Since this process — known as echosounding — only maps a strip of the sea floor under the ship, the maps it produces often show the path the ship took, hence the "ship tracks." In this case, the soundings produced by a ship are also about 1% deeper than the data we have in surrounding areas — likely an error — making the tracks stand out more.
OK, but could we find Atlantis on the off chance it actually exists? Yes, but it would be expensive -- about $2 billion. Hmm, compared to various bailouts that doesn't sound like that much money after all. But it would be hard to justify that expense when Republicans are mocking volcano tracking.