Dark matter island in the Pacific??

tahayassen

Oh so Google makes their maps? I thought Google Earth was based on actual images.

Evo

That doesn't mean they can't tweak them.

Jimmy Snyder

The earth is made of dark matter. All except for this island that is.

Drakkith

Perhaps it was cloudy the day they took the picture.

Simon Bridge

Note: Google Earth includes clouds in some of the images. Sometimes they obscure quite large ground features.
OTOH: over open water they don't seem to be using any specific images.
Maybe they trusted a bunch of cartographers who claimed to have been there and stood on the island over a photographing technology that has been known to glitch?

Of course - scientifically - a mismatch like that would be grounds for further investigation rather than fudging the results but it happens more than you'd suspect.

I recall NZ science students (at HS level) being penalized in external exams if they did not draw their "best-fit" lines through the origin when the theory predicted that's where they should end up (but the data said otherwise). Doesn't happen now but some schools still teach that kind of fudge.

Simon Bridge

Out of curiosity - just went there in google earth.
The black area shown in the BBC article pics is not there but there are a bunch of photos claiming to be of the sights there ... the wildlife example is particularly striking.

Studiot

I wonder if perhaps Google employed Jonathan Swift as a cartographic consultant?