DaveC426913 said:
Now that I see the actual images I can state categorically that they are rendering artifacts of Google Earth software. I've seen Google Earth render artifacts just like that near my home (which is not near Atlantis).
Go to Toronto and glide across the city NorthWest toward Bolton. You will pass over a hill that appears to be several hundred feet high, vertical and razor-straight for dozens of miles. It blithely ignores all landmarks such as roads - which go straight up the "cliff" face.
The artifacts occur because Google Earth is calculating and extrapolating altitudes. Sometimes it drifts from proper values, and must "correct" itself - which is does abruptly.
I did experience that effect, but it was very minor and almost unnoticeable. Even, then it was only during the glide itself, when I was in continuous motion from Toronto to Bolton (I did some of the glides at a constant altitude throughout and some in such a way that I glided "down" at an angle from Toronto to Bolton). I do agree with the fact that there are rendering artifacts, and that calculation and extrapolation of altitudes occurs. But this point does not apply to the photos I took, because they were taken in a static position in which all of the rendering, calculation, and extrapolation had fully adjusted to the camera's particular viewing angle and altitude, whereas the example you describe is dynamic
gliding from Toronto to Bolton.
I maintain that if Google Earth ran on a machine with a rendering engine that was powerful enough to correct for altitude changes faster than our eye could notice, there would be no abrupt discontinuities and artifacts
even during the glide, and the terrain would transition seamlessly (in "real time"), just as our visual system is able to do. Again, the artifacts you mentioned disappear when not gliding (or moving in any way), and would do so even when gliding if the computer had a really powerful graphics card. The image I took was taken when I was completely still, so if the formation is an artifact, it would have to be a "static artifact."
But there is no reason for a static artifact to exist at the location I mapped, other than as an
ad hoc argument. Such an anomaly would be a form of random, rather than systematic error. But if it indeed is form of random error, then the randomness of the error has a systematic commonality in that if you swing around at any angle and height, the formation retains its essential geometry. Furthermore, the "artifact" increases its clarity and distinctiveness when viewed at roughly "eye level," just as the 3-dimensional geometry of an object seen far below or above eye level, in everyday experience and on dry land, is difficult to make out. In other words, the supposed artifact changes in appearance in precisely the way one would expect a "real artifact" to do so.
I argue that there is no basis, save for claiming the contents of the images contain an
arbitrary and random anomaly, to assert that the images (only the first two images, the third one, I agree, is suspect) do not represent, more or less, whatever geological feature that is actually there.
Since what I am claiming is that the image reveals the existence of a
geological anomaly whereas you are claiming that the image reveals the existence of an
imaging anomaly, we seem to have some common ground, namely that if the image is "real," then it is an anomaly, and that if it is not, then it is an anomaly as well, but of a different kind.
