Google Rejects 'Atlantis' Discovery

(Feb. 21) - Google says its new underwater search engine didn't actually find Atlantis, shooting down fervent speculation that the technology had discovered the fabled sunken city.

Google Earth images showing what resembled a grid of streets on the ocean floor off the coast of Africa sparked an intense debate over the identity of the unusual underwater discovery.

Several news services, including London's the Sun and the Telegraph, questioned whether it may be Atlantis, the legendary island described by Greek philosopher Plato. "It looks like an aerial map of Milton Keynes," British aeronautical engineer Bernie Bamford, who first spotted the pattern, told the Sun. "It must be man-made."

Atlantis experts told the papers that the strange criss-cross design is located at one of the possible sites of the storied city. Dr. Charles Orser, curator of historical archeology at New York State University and a leading expert on Atlantis, called the grid "fascinating."

According to CNet, Google shot down the Atlantis suggestion, saying the tracks were actually left by boat sonar.

"It's true that many amazing discoveries have been made in Google Earth, including a pristine forest in Mozambique that is home to previously unknown species and the remains of an ancient Roman villa," the company said in a statement. "In this case, however, what users are seeing is an artifact of the data collection process. Bathymetric (or sea floor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the sea floor. The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data."

But Google's dismissal didn't stop the debate on such sites as Facebook and Digg. "OMG, this is incredible!" one blogger wrote on Digg. "I smell a cover-up."

According to Plato, Atlantis sank into the ocean "in a single day and night of misfortune" after a failed attempt to invade Athens around 9400 BC.

This is the second big story in days involving hotly disputed images. The first concerned photos that appeared to show a giant serpent-like figure in a river in Borneo. Click through the gallery below for more on that story.