Atlantis Rising?
December 16, 2009
By Scott Hamilton
In Atlantis
8
I’m not sure what to make of this one.
On December 9th, 2009 the Herald de Paris announced that anonymous researchers using “advanced satellite imagery” had found an ancient city beneath the waters of the Caribbean. I’ve included one of the photos that allegedly shows the city to the right. Despite having done no onsite inspection, the researchers had some surprisingly specific ideas about the find.
Asked if this city is the legendary city of Atlantis, the researchers immediately said no. “The romanticized ideal of Atlantis probably never existed, nor will anyone ever strap on a SCUBA tank, jump in the water, and find a city gateway that says, ‘Welcome to Atlantis.’ However, we do believe that this city may have been one of many cities of an advanced, seafaring, trade-based civilization, which may have been visited by their Eurocentric counterparts.”
The article ended with the following.
The project team asks that for more information, or to find out how to help fund their research, please contact the Herald de Paris’ publisher, Jes Alexander, at a specially set-up telephone number: 415-738-7811.
Today the Herald de Paris ran a second article, this one featuring many more images. This time the images are supposed to be “unfiltered,” and the article ends with the same phone number and entreaty for funding.
It seems blindingly obvious that these are images from Google Earth or some similar service, and the “structures” reported are digital compression artifacts caused by zooming in too far. The Herald de Paris appears to be a serious newspaper, not a tabloid. I’m not sure why any newspaper would run a story like this but allow the researchers to be anonymous. The paper even seems to be actively involved with these anonymous researchers, because the paper’s publisher established the phone line for them. Anyone over in France want to give that number a call and see what happens? Is this a practical joke, or has publisher Jes Alexander fallen in with scam artists?
“It seems blindingly obvious that these are images from Google Earth or some similar service, and the “structures” reported are digital compression artifacts caused by zooming in too far.”
Yeah, this sounds remarkably like the “discovery” of Atlantis from back in February (http://tinyurl.com/yh22o6u) which was absolutely shown to be Google Earth artifacts. Except that case was 600 miles west of the Canary Islands and the story was broken in London’s _Telegraph_ (http://tinyurl.com/nnotus). Also, that feature was the size of Wales (apparently a unit of measure in British newspapers) – seemingly a little large for a “city.”
That phone number doesn’t look French – seems to be located in San Francisco. Give ‘em a call; see what’s up.
And the plot thins! The editor, Jes Alexander, got pissy with the Huffington Post for their article on his story. His response is quite the hissy-fit and is pretty revealing of his probable motive behind this absurdity: money. He does NOT like that a blog as big as the Huff-Po isn’t steering people to his fund-raising article.
He has this to say: “I know what I see. So do a whole lot of really respected scientists, scholars, and researchers. Still, nobody wants to put their name on something until they can see it with their own eyes. Makes sense.”
Actually, that really doesn’t. If not one of those “respected scientists, scholars, and researchers” is willing to name themselves then either a) they don’t exist and this is a hoax solely perpetrated by Mr. Alexander, or b) they exist but are not, in fact, respected scientists, scholars, and researchers.
So I suspect that Mr. Alexander is either out to bilk people of their money, or he just wants to see how far he can get with the story. Hey, he got on the Huff-Po, so that’s a start.
There’s a good explanation of the image over in the comments section of the Huffington Post’s article on the “discovery”. Turns out it’s not JPEG compression, but rather the result of noise in the satellite sensor. Here’s the full comment, as well as a link to a satellite image of Manhattan where you can see the same grid-like pattern in the water.
Grant Thompson: “Mystery solved.
I work with satellite imagery and these patterns appear where the image is very low contrast (I could show you an example from the waters around Manhattan).The patterns are produced by noise in the sensor, exacerbated by compression/expansion and contrast stretching during post-processing. I actually spend quite a lot of time trying to get rid of them…
They are not to be confused with jpeg compression artifacts, which are not as linear/orthogonal. I’ve only seen these patterns from satellites using pushbroom-type scanning sensors.
You get them in imagery from Mars, too, and you can imagine the hoo-ha that that creates…”
“You can see a sample of sensor noise in the waters around Manhattan here: http://www.eurimage.com/tmp/Atlantis_NY.jpg.”
“You can see a sample of sensor noise in the waters around Manhattan…”
Actually, that’s photographic evidence of the lost kingdom of Lemuria.
Is that where I can find Medusa? Her head would make a great accessory next DragonCon.
More and more, the whole thing seems to be a publicity stunt. The latest response from the Herald de Paris editor criticizes MSNBC and The Huffington Post for stating that his online publication claimed to have found Atlantis. In truth, he never claimed to have found Atlantis. He merely saw some imaging artifacts in a satellite picture and claimed they were ancient ruins, which is…so much more legitimate. Given that this is a money-making ploy which he has yet to back down from, I have to wonder if Mr. Alexander is in fraud territory.
[...] if that wasn’t really a dimensional portal over Norway, and if that wasn’t really the satellite discovery of the ancient ruins of Atlantis, this is definitely footage of a giant* pyramid hovering over the Kremlin, threatening to rain [...]
me and my friends used to participate on a fund raising event for the protection of panda bears*’;