NOAA: Tour the Ocean bottom!

The ocean -- it is the most prominent feature on Earth, and of immeasurable importance to life on the planet. But what would it look like if all of the water was drained out of it? Mountains and valleys that dwarf Everest; shifting plates and undersea volcanoes; seams, ripples, and plains. Though ships have mapped only a small portion of the ocean floor, satellites are used to generate incredibly details maps of the bottom of the ocean. By sensing the minute gravitational changes that pull, push, and bulge the ocean surface, the bottom's shape can be inferred from space. These bathymetric maps reveal the incredibly dynamic terrain of the ocean. Where available, ship-based measurements are included to provide even higher detail. This visualization tours the ocean floor from the gentle continental slopes to the deepest trenches using data analyzed and archived by NOAA. Does it look familiar? It is actually the same data that Google has incorporated into Google Earth and Ocean.

LINK

Very interesting HD video I truly recommend you guys to see - interesting especially when considering the search for traces of water on Mars for example.

Very interesting indeed thanks for the post.

reply to post by gigaherc

I watched this clip you posted, it was incredible! When I saw it on you tube it described it as a bathymetric map.

If you google bathymetric maps and go to the NOAA site, there are thousands of incredible maps.

Science on a sphere (a subsite of NOAA bathometry) had incredible maps, but my computer couldn't handle them:

sos.noaa.gov...

NOAA geophysical center:

www.ngdc.noaa.gov...

If you just click on the main map on that page alone it's a pretty good one, you could spend days exploring all the maps available on this site!
Nice find, thanks, now I know what a bathymetric map is! I love learning so much cool stuff on this site!