One-fifth of Earth's ocean floor is now mapped | Hacker News Reader

One-fifth of Earth's ocean floor is now mapped

bbc.com

83 pointspseudolus24 comments

I'm always fascinated by that fact that despite the immense amount of observations we have carried out on our planet (especially during the satellite age), the ocean is still largely uncharted in detail.

The discovery of the Muirfield Seamount [1] is a great story. A cargo ship is steaming through the Indian Ocean in waters charted at 5,000 meters depth, and suddently it hits a previously unknown submarine mountain where the summit extends to 16-18 meters below the sea. And apparently no one had discovered it prior 1973, when that cargo ship hit it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muirfield_Seamount

A similar case with a telling difference is Anchorite Rock in NZ's Hauraki Gulf:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Anchorite_(P422)#Service

The difference being that this rock was already known by some local fishermen, who had allegedly refrained from informing the Hydrography Office because it was an excellent and little-known fishing ground. (jokingly) lacking patent protection for fishing spots, they opted for a trade secret.

That leaves 56% of the Earth's surface unmapped. (!!)

Then add most (?) of the Earth's surface covered by ice, which seems at least as hard to see/sample/explore as the ocean floor, and we're living on a planet whose surface is nearly two thirds unknown!

Education and revelations to come!

A mountain range the size of the Alps was found fairly recently (2009) buried under the ice in Antarctica:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/feb/24/antarcti...

Most of this would likely bring revelations about insects and plants at most, right? I know new species of insects are discovered pretty regularly while animals are rarer to come by since they're a bit harder to miss.

I hope this better mapping is used for this:

> Seabed 2030 supports the UN's Sustainable Development Goal 14: 'to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.'[1]

and not for this:

> A new report by the Deep Sea Mining Campaign and MiningWatch Canada examines the potential risks of seabed mining operations… 16 international mining companies have contracts to explore the seabed for minerals within the Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, and other companies have contracts to explore for nodules in the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific Ocean.

[1] https://seabed2030.gebco.net/faq/#q1

[2] https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/deep-sea-mining-an-environ...

These seem like vanity metrics: a gauge of how much we care about science and exploration. The truth is that open ocean projects are slow and expensive. High-effort / low-impact projects like fine granularity sea floor maps are difficult to coordinate without financial backing from a national superpower dedicated to data sharing. I suspect that what will change the trajectory is new low cost technology that simplifies the process.

So we have had these nuclear submarines hiding in the oceans and listening for other submarines for the last fifty years. And in this time we have not charted out the bathymetry to a high degree of accuracy?

I don't believe the navies need centimetre resolution bathymetry however if they had it then they would keep quiet about it much like how the National Reconnaissance Office keep quiet about their spy satellites.

Given the purposes of military submarines, most of the ocean is not useful to visit, and most of that "uninteresting" ocean is too deep for those submarines to care about.

Seems like this technique is not precise enough to resolve the likes of MH370? Otherwise at the rate they're going they could find the wreck soon.

If, like me, you needed a refresher about flight MH370, I wholeheartedly recommend this video by LEMMiNO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd2KEHvK-q8

That was very interesting, I like that it mentioned conspiracy theories without giving them credence.

I remember MH370 as the moment I realized that the ocean was wilderness. While the search was underway, my coworkers and I spent quite a bit of time guessing what could have happened. Quite a few of us assumed that the resources of the various governments involved surely would recover something fairly quickly. That is until we saw video of the Indian ocean, it was immediately clear that if they did find anything it would be luck.

Thanks, that was great!

Even if the stated “Seabed 2030 has a desire for a resolution of at least 100m everywhere” were correct I doubt it, but it seems to be incorrect. https://seabed2030.gebco.net/faq/#q5:

  Depth range    Grid cell size  % of world ocean floor
     0– 1500 m   100 × 100 m     13.7
  1500– 3000 m   200 × 200 m     11
  3000– 5750 m   400 × 400 m     72.6
  5750–11000 m   800 × 800 m      2.7

MH370 could be 4000 m down, and broken apart.

I know oceans and caves are relatively unexplored parts of Earth. Are there any land surfaces that are similarly unexplored?

Depends what you mean by unexplored. Satellites have taken photographs of the whole surface, but I imagine there are still pockets of remote places where no human has set foot.

Inaccessible mountain slopes, central Antarctica, the land under glaciers, central Sahara, deep jungle, far northern Canada and Russia.

Or, more interestingly, modern cities may still hide secrets. For example, it’s well known that London is built on top of London. Digging anywhere typically uncovers archaeological evidence of past generations. But there are still some places which are off-limits to digging because they are under historic buildings. For example, St Paul‘s cathedral very likely has historical artefacts underneath it, but we will never know because you’d have to demolish St Paul’s first to get at them.

My favourite is the discovery of a hidden room within the UK Parliament built in the 17th century, with eletricals from the 1950s that still worked.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-51630630

San Clemente church in Rome was built in the 11th century. It is built on top of an older (4th century) church, which again is on top of a Roman temple. You can climb down stairs to explore these.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Clemente_al_Laterano

Another possibility would be to use soundwaves, x-rays and other energetic wave forms to locate and map stuff under such buildings. I wonder how far the technology is in this area...

Ground-penetrating radar seems to be fairly well developed as well

There is plenty of interesting stuff still hiding under tree canopies.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/02/582664327...

Not the bit with a crashed Malaysia Airlines jet, but quite a few places nearby (in hundreds of kilometres away oceanic terms) maybe

Only 1/5?!

Earth is really big.

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