Satellites detect 'thousands' of new ocean-bottom mountains
m.bbc.com
m.bbc.com
It is true that they did have the chart available, and that they would have been far more prudent with regard to their intended track (and speed of advance) had they known about even something as vague as discolored water while planning the voyage. But implying that the fault was either limited to the crew or obvious in retrospect is unrealistic IMHO.
The crew should have done a more thorough scrub during their voyage planning process, but the NOAA and Navy offices that prepare charts should also have done a better job of ensuring that hazards to safe navigation are listed on all of their charts (but especially the ones intended to be used most frequently!), not just one or some of them.
Removed redundant and pedantically incorrect extra use of word "new".
Not, "new data revealing 'new' underwater topography."
Sorry if that sounds pedantic, but it's an important distinction imo, these 'underwater mountains' didn't come into existence recently.
Plate tectonics theory was born by looking at the ocean floor. During second world war, in the Atlantic, there was huge effort by both parties to obtain good quality maps of the ocean floor. This was to drive/combat the german U-boats. In addition, "new" sensitive magnetic devises were developed to detect large bodies of steel (e.g. submarines). After war (during 50's and 60's) these new data came out and researchers found several striking features: first, the ocean basis were not deeper in the middle but, on the contrary, were deeper just by the continents. In the middle they found a mountain chain that goes from pole to pole with an average height os 5000m (over seafloor, still submerged). Actually this is the larger mountain chain on Earth.
Second, they found that seafloor rocks have a permanent magnetization. This is not surprising giving their composition, but the ming blogging feature is that this magnetization has a clear pattern of stripes parallel to the mid Atlantic mountain chain.
These two observations, that didn't fit at all with the theories of Earth evolution of the moment, were the main triggers of the new Plate Tectonics theory. Nowadays, despite there is little doubt on how the Earth and oceanic plates behave, it is not clear how is the exact mechanism driving tectonic plates.
The thermal state of tectonic plates, hot at the mid oceanic ridge and cold near continents, explains the observed bathymetry. Nevertheless there is no agreement in the geophysical community on how this cooling happen. The first order is absolutely clear, but if you go to the details two theories compete to explain observations (the so called "half-space cooling" vs. "Plate Model"). Detailed bathymetry is key to distinguish which one is closer to what happen in Nature. We need better observations that the currently available to advance in our understanding.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8408514
submitted 22 hours ago (alas, without discussion, so it's good to see some comments here). I see how that was done.
That's terrible advice. No wonder /new is full of shitty submissions.
Reposts are ok if it's a good story that hasn't had much attention [1]. The duplicate detector is deliberately left porous to allow for this. Otherwise the luck of the draw would prevent many—if not most—good stories from being seen.