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BobbyDropTableUsers t1_iy2mcno wrote

False. As of June 29, 2022, we've mapped 23.4%.

Not very false.. but I just wanted to have a Dwight Schrute moment.

344

PoorlyAttired t1_iy2osn5 wrote

What's the definition of 'mapped'? I've seen global sea depth maps and presumably they have been mostly covered by depth surveys/sonar at some point or another. On land 'mapped' normally means recording the topography (roads,, buildings, forest, rivers) but for the seabed, what do you record? Depth? Depth and material? Salinity? There's not much to map.

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tutier09 t1_iy2q58y wrote

There are still seamounts we haven't discovered yet. For instance, in 2005 the USS San Francisco collided with one which caused serious damage. They nearly didn't make it. Google it, there are impressive pictures of the submarine.

Edit: I just googled the most recent collision with a seamount. That was the USS Connecticut last year.

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bak3donh1gh t1_iy2tp3u wrote

How could sonar not detect those while the ship was moving toward it? I could see it if they were for some reason trying to be stealthy, but aside from Russian waters and North Korean, subs should be ok.

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tutier09 t1_iy2v5fs wrote

I don't know for submarines but I've nearly crashed a scientific device because the sonar gave the false depth on our research vessel.

You have to set the sonar to a certain depth which you get from nautical charts. I don't remember the exact value but let's say that the digital nautical chart said 2000 m so the sonar was set to let's say 1500-2500 m. We deployed our oceanographic device when one of the officers double checked with an old nautical chart on paper and it said 1000 m. We've already been down for a few hundred meters when he called us to stop. We then slowly advanced and, believe it or not, the old chart was right. It was unlucky that the real depth was exactly half of what we initially thought it would be. Because of reflection the sonar gave us the way to the bottom and back to the surface as depth. If the officer hadn't listened to his gut feeling we would have wrecked equipment worth more than a big family house. That was off the beaten track though, far away from shipping routes - I think they should be mapped accurately by now. If the setting is correct, sonar gives you a good idea of what is down below. More detailed than satellites ever could.

But as I said no idea how that works with submarines. Maybe they didn't have the sonar on for some tactical or training reasons.

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EggKey5513 t1_iy3wfu2 wrote

I believe the differences in ocean current and temperatures in different layers of ocean causes sonar readings to be inaccurate. I’m relying on 15 years of past readings to answer this.

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tutier09 t1_iy47ble wrote

If you keep measuring that stuff you can factor that in. But it's not that much of a difference honestly. I mean not like double or half the actual depth.

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Smart_Ass_Dave t1_iy45r5o wrote

Submarines are (almost) always in total stealth mode. This started during the Cold War. Soviet and American subs would track each other and try to find each other while avoiding detection themselves because total global thermonuclear war could start like...any second and knowing where the enemy's ballistic missile submarines were was not something you wanted to wait on. Keeping submarine locations secret is so important that even commanders didn't know beyond a vague area they were ordered to patrol.

Active sonar (the pings) is rarely used in general, as it's sort of like sneaking around in a forest and turning on a spotlight. If you've been seen but you don't know where the enemy is, it is worth shining it around, but if you have no idea where the enemy is, active sonar gives away your position at a much further distance than it reveals enemy positions. Instead passive sonar is used, listening for the displacement of water by the hull and propeller.

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Paladin327 t1_iy3o1b8 wrote

When underway, a submarine will generally not use their active sonar as using it kinda defeats the whole purpose of a submarine. It’d be like turning on a flashlight in a dark room when you’re trying to not be seen. Subs rely on passive sonar mostly, so unless an uncharted undersea mountain is transmitting noise, it’s invisible

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TheAdmiralMoses t1_iy2q36v wrote

Not exactly, I believe those are mostly extrapolation based off of the known depths, scanning ships go along major routes and scan the sea floor to measure it directly, but they don't know more remote areas, which is 70% of the ocean.

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0ba78683-dbdd-4a31-a t1_iy33y7k wrote

Born too late to explore the earth.

Too early to explore the stars.

Just in time to explore the oceans.

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WalkerBRiley t1_iy3into wrote

Too bad we've pretty much given up on the stars and the oceans.

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Halvus_I t1_iy3x1db wrote

Stars are hard because of the distance, and depths because of pressure. We'll establish colonies on our planets/moons though.

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LeopardTail_ButtPlug t1_iy5oxjg wrote

I doubt colonies. Way more realistic to have structures below sea at livable depths than transporting everyone via space elevator to terraform a lifeless rock. Not to mention it’s not gonna house many people.

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Dont_n0wereIam t1_iy81zmf wrote

So would the elevator only be accessible at a certain time every day or would the moon become stuck in one place? Or would it be connected to a landing pad that would rotate around the plant with the moon? Does the moon rotate?

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This_Bug_6771 t1_iy54nl2 wrote

no we won't . mankind will never leave earth

−15

Halvus_I t1_iy551wg wrote

Thats just plain silly.

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pihb666 t1_iy7x4x9 wrote

Dude has a point. Like we are going to leave this planet and all of a sudden humans morph into right thinking good people like star trek. If humans ever make it to other planets and colonize, it'll just be more fighting and greed and suffering. All on a larger scale.

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David_Umstattd t1_iy4zg25 wrote

When people give up is when opportunity prospers. Hard to do something that everybody else is trying to do first.

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seXJ69 t1_iy2lh23 wrote

Duh, it's spooky down there.

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stufmenatooba t1_iy2m3um wrote

Doesn't help that Namor and Aquaman have turned all the fish against us.

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Paradigm6790 t1_iy2naw5 wrote

Aquaman's biggest weakness is that we could just label his entire people as endangered sushi and they'll all be dead in under a decade and no matter how many important people he kills some dude in a boat in southeast asia is gonna be bart simpsoning them.

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David_Umstattd t1_iy4zm7q wrote

When a fish bites your thigh and you wanna blame some other guy that’s Namore!

3

omar1993 t1_iy3ytzx wrote

Hey, it's not so bad! Here, there's this wholesome, safe ocean exploration game called Subnautica that shows you how cuddly and sweet it is under the sea!

(Hehehe)

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SheebsMcGee t1_iy45y4k wrote

Very wholesome, lots of soothing ocean* sounds

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omar1993 t1_iy470ah wrote

Yeah! And remember, the screaming sounds in the depths of the cute and cuddly Ecological Dead Zone is the aquatic life asking for a hug! Go right towards it!

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SheebsMcGee t1_iy48i1g wrote

Ahhh… Good times. Lots of watching eyes and waiting teeth

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omar1993 t1_iy4956x wrote

Yep! The eyes are on the lookout for new friends, and the teeth are for flashing with the brightest smile!

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SheebsMcGee t1_iy49bgx wrote

And the gentle hum of radiation to help you sleep better and ignore something bumping into your pod

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Paradigm6790 t1_iy2mvwi wrote

You can possibly survive the vacuum of space for 2 minutes. For fun let's say 1 minute. It's all theoretical.

You can survive 0 seconds at the bottom of the ocean. You just die.

No pressure >>>>>>>>> lots of pressure

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nooneknowsgreenguy t1_iy31zxt wrote

"Good Lord! That's over 5000 atmospheres of pressure!"

"How many atmospheres can the ship withstand?"

"Well, it was built for space travel, so anywhere between zero and one."

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HazelFrederick t1_iy47ei0 wrote

Sure, they have the Braves, but it’s a third rate symphony.

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bumpyclock t1_iy2tc0d wrote

It’s pressure differential. In space it’s 1atm. Bottom of the ocean it’s many atm

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bak3donh1gh t1_iy2trwn wrote

A vacuum has 1atm of pressure? I think you should check your numbers.

−26

MannishSeal t1_iy2urgw wrote

No they said "differential". There is a 1 atm pressure differential between the vacuum of space and earths atmosphere.

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bumpyclock t1_iy2vhti wrote

I said pressure differential. Earth has 1 atm, space has 0.

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bruinslacker t1_iy2y3os wrote

I think he means the pressure differential between space and your body. Most of the time there is about 1 atm of pressure pushing against your body. To avoid expanding or shrinking your body pushes back at approximately 1 atm. If you were suddenly flung into space the pressure inside your body would still be about 1 atm but the pressure outside would be nearly 0.

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Nothammer t1_iy2u9y9 wrote

There's actually a little pressure in space. But not 1 atm for sure.

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bak3donh1gh t1_iy2ujmh wrote

Space is relative. So yeah a little pressure surrounding the earth, surprisingly far away as well. But it the space between galaxies I'm gunno go with no pressure. As this video will teach(I did not actually watch the whole video)

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Nothammer t1_iy2uvlm wrote

Even I between galaxies there are molecules from time to time. Space is nearly a perfect vaccum though and we're talking in absolute miniscule amounts of pressure here. It's absolutely negligible, but it's technically a liiiittle pressure.

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Vertebrae_Viking t1_iy36aik wrote

Technicalities like this are to be ignored if you don’t want to piss off a random physicist.

Edit: medics don’t care about outer space.

1

Schuben t1_iy3nayb wrote

Like a general practicioner or are we talking about specialists?

1

jkmoule t1_iy2utag wrote

They mean the differential is 1atm in space. Because it's 1atm of pressure within earth's atmosphere at sea level, but is nearly 0atm in the vacuum of space, so the pressure differential is 1atm.

Meanwhile, pressure increases by 1atm roughly every 10m of depth in the ocean. The average ocean depth is 3700m, so a pressure of about 370atm. The pressure differential between the surface and that is 369atm, far larger than the 1atm differential between the surface and the vacuum of space.

1

OakParkCemetary t1_iy2wx6e wrote

There was a Sealab that was supposed to be working on it...but Captain Hank and company just screwed around instead of working

Although they did teach a little fat kid to speak dolphin

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ReysRealFather t1_iy3m2wq wrote

I heard they had a doctor, but he wasn't a real doctor, he was more a doctor like Dr. Dre is a doctor.

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ClarkTwain t1_iy3qk37 wrote

It was going so well until he declared Martian Law.

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Paladin327 t1_iy3odg4 wrote

Well, there was the actual sealab programs which provided major advancesments in saturation diving for deep sea divers, so there was that

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KindRecognition403 t1_iy4an41 wrote

The sea lab that opened in 2021? Yeah those guys have no idea what they are doing. I mean how many times does it have to keep blowing up? Tax dollars wasted.

2

cutelyaware t1_iy2xqw1 wrote

We've seen 100% of the ocean surface

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Tsjernobull t1_iy375q6 wrote

Have we though. Water is notorious for not staying still and going up down and sideways all the time

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rangatang t1_iy5ejxo wrote

What I like most about rivers is, you can't step in the same river twice. The water's always changing, always flowing.

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reshef t1_iy4v3g1 wrote

I recall reading that even this isn’t true as no one has actually ever traveled to point nemo

0

cutelyaware t1_iy4wpbe wrote

We haven't traveled Mars either. That wasn't the question.

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IBeTrippin t1_iy44wij wrote

100% of the ocean has been mapped. Perhaps only 20% has been mapped at some arbitrary high level of precision not defined by the article author.

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Jscottpilgrim t1_iy4rir7 wrote

Are you talking about the surface or the floor?

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IBeTrippin t1_iy50lwk wrote

Both. The linked article is pop-science nonsense.

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pickles55 t1_iy5sr3u wrote

The floor. Satellites are able to scan it from space. It's not mapped to a very fine level of detail but we have basic depth data for the whole ocean

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SashaWoodson t1_iy2noz8 wrote

James Cameron is going to fix that

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Major_Lennox t1_iy2ndkx wrote

What's the estimate for how much the world's navies have explored/mapped?

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Riegel_Haribo t1_iy35ect wrote

The estimate is classified.

Seriously dumb headline. 100% has been mapped. One has to just qualify that with "not mapped to five meter resolution" etc. It's like saying a city hasn't been mapped because they don't have the location of every tree.

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WalkerBRiley t1_iy3izq5 wrote

It is the standard "Stop spending money on space exploration when we've an ocean to explore right here!" argument. As though we can't do both.

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Lileowastaken t1_iy46sbt wrote

It's funnier when they go on about the Mariana Trench like we haven't been down there over 20 times already.

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Tsjernobull t1_iy37br3 wrote

I had to scroll way to long for someone to finally mention this

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iliacbaby t1_iy68nez wrote

we didnt even discover hydrothermal vents until like the 1970s. there's a lot down there that we don't know about

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Arcturion t1_iy2s1nb wrote

This is a good thing. What is not mapped, cannot be exploited.

It is not a coincidence that Japan is the leading country in mapping out its share of the ocean, and has mapped out 97.7% of its EEZ. Their govt has even told us why: -

>The Japanese government launched a project known as the Development of Innovative Technologies for Exploration of Deep Sea Resources, under its Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program, to come up with high-efficiency, low-cost deep-ocean resource surveying and extraction systems. New deep-water acoustic mapping technologies, exploratory autonomous vehicles and mud pumping machinery are in early testing.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d42473-020-00528-8

Once more of the ocean has been mapped out, underwater mining and fracking will not be far behind, as well as the prospect of international conflict over undersea resources.

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Paladin327 t1_iy3olok wrote

Just wait until Elon brings up the idea of building ankther ship for seafloor mining of manganese nodules. He’ll definitly be up to something if he does that

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bak3donh1gh t1_iy2tvf3 wrote

Well, robots are gunna hafta get a lot more advanced for underwater mining. We're still waiting on robots to take over Mcdonalds.

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WhimsicalWyvern t1_iy3mq5a wrote

The cost savings of robots taking over McDonalds is still minimal or non existent. The cost savings of using robots in industrial applications is enormous, and has been advancing continuously at a rapid pace.

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Ulysses1978ii t1_iy35kb2 wrote

Pretty sure thats what the Russian flag under the ice near the North Pole was about a few years ago.

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fatDaddy21 t1_iy2v4xl wrote

The real TIL; hadn't given that much thought.

0

moonias t1_iy3hlph wrote

I think you mean ocean floor right?

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OldMork t1_iy2ot1k wrote

any signs of MH370 yet? also a fishing rod I lost 1972, a red ABU.

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Paladin327 t1_iy3oshb wrote

Parts of it washed up onto madagascar and reunion island.

Also fun fact, the US Navy found a submarine lost on the sea floor with “it’s somewhere in the atlantic between Rota Spain and Norvolk Virginia” as a starting point and calculated its position within 200 yards

2

obsertaries t1_iy3w4do wrote

A few years ago I talked to a fisheries science PhD and he explained that despite being an absolute staple in many countries, we know almost nothing about tuna. They show up near the surface in some common places and they can be caught there, but then they go deep underwater and come up somewhere else. No one can track where they go; it’s all guesswork, even after doing it for thousands of years.

Edit: not knowing anything about them also means that you only know when you’ve overfished them when it’s too late.

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dongasaurus t1_iy436ut wrote

We definitely track where they go, maybe not where they are when they’re deep underwater, but individuals can be tracked as they migrate between eastern Canada, Europe, gulf coast, etc.

Edit: some of these tags also measure depth, so it’s pretty safe to say we know where they go.

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Remorseful_User t1_iy5eue5 wrote

They go down. OPs Mom told me so and she's an expert on going down.

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giraffe_life t1_iy3wl95 wrote

yea...I dont believe this one moment

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kozmonyet t1_iy2zc82 wrote

When that commercial flight disappeared out of Singapore a few years back, you could watch new areas of the ocean floor appear on maps with fine details as the search progressed for the wreckage. It looked like plow furrows as the scanning ships ran search grids and detail showed up. Most people don't know how generic and horribly low resolution the current depth data is until they see the details that show up in high res.

And so much more to go...

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MisterBaked t1_iy4i6z0 wrote

The amount of pressure at the deepest point in the ocean (Challenger Deep, Mariana Trench) is 15,570 psi.

That's the equivalent of 100 adult elephants standing on your head.

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springlord t1_iy34qjj wrote

Meanwhile on Earth, more than 99% of the ocean has been polluted. Big success for humankind!

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pixartist t1_iy36j7u wrote

to be fair it's mostly desert down there

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KING_CH1M4IRA t1_iy5hlko wrote

“There is nothing out there! All there is, is sea, and birds, and fish.”

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dangil t1_iy3gtwn wrote

somebody call Roy Scheider's ghost

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Responsible-Movie966 t1_iy3tckr wrote

When it finally comes to light that extraterrestrials have been visiting us for millennia, we’re going to learn that they have these massive vacation resorts in the deepest parts of our oceans.

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Wild_Recognition_753 t1_iy4ddaz wrote

And this is why Im studying to be a marine biologist after finishing my PhD in mechatronics, down there there's a lot of interesting creepy alien looking fish and other creatures waiting to be discovered

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moneyisburiedunderth t1_iy6r1kw wrote

thats where the secrets lie. kaijus and stuff. big creatures, who can travel to centre of the earth.

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twolegs t1_iy2vqx3 wrote

Let's just assume it is too wet to go there.

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joelex8472 t1_iy3l0et wrote

If I was an alien that’s where I’d park my spaceship.

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darrellbear t1_iy424ls wrote

Mars has about as much surface area as all the dry land on Earth. That's a lot.

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Important_Ant_Rant t1_iy4jneb wrote

‘Johnson, what can we put on the map here?’

‘Its all water, but some of it is quite wawy here, sir.’

‘Good. I will plot ‘sea’ in here, then. Continue on.’

1

wanderlustcub t1_iy56576 wrote

I remember when Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared and they Mapped huge swaths of the Indian ocean floor for the first time.

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tanfj t1_iy58spk wrote

The Benthic Treaty with the Deep Ones is there for our protection.

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arinamarcella t1_iy62ohp wrote

I, a master who can see the entire ocean on Google Earth.

1

ICPosse8 t1_iy63g5b wrote

“As a result..” I feel this is implying that since we don’t know shit about the ocean we just so happen to know more about Mars. This makes no sense.

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Brock_Way t1_iy675x3 wrote

Uhm...the bottom of the ocean isn't on the surface.

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Sliesttugboat t1_iy6m7fb wrote

I highly doubt we have better mapping of mars than we do of earth

1

abthomps t1_iy3p14j wrote

Remind me again what percentage of Mars has been explored by humans?

0

VinceDaPazza t1_iy4c71w wrote

Can we talk Elon into going there instead

0

Jumpy-Win5810 t1_iy57o7r wrote

wow 80% and here it is I thought humans had been sailing the oceans for centuries

0

Jumpy-Win5810 t1_iy57wns wrote

Imagine that we only know about 20% of the islands that exist!! or maybe this is not true???

0