In an octopus’s garden

THREE billion dollars sounds a lot to spend on a map. But if it is a map of two-thirds of Earth’s surface, then the cost per square kilometre, about $8.30, is not, perhaps, too bad. And making such a map at such a cost is just what an organisation called the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) is proposing to do. GEBCO, based in Monaco, has been around since 1903. Its remit, as its name suggests, is to chart the seabed completely. Until now, it has managed less than a fifth of that task in detail. But means of mapping the depths have improved by leaps and bounds over recent decades. So, with the aid of the Nippon Foundation, a large, Japanese philanthropic outfit, GEBCO now proposes to do the job properly. It plans to complete its mission by 2030.

The area of Earth’s ocean is two and a half times the area of Mars—and it is often claimed that Mars’s surface is the better recorded of the two. It took mere hours to find the crash site of Schiaparelli, an ill-fated Mars-bound space craft (see <a…Continue reading
Source: Economist