New Google Earth 5.0 Takes You To Mars & The Bottom of the Ocean

Had a few minutes to play with the new Google Earth 5.0. It's very impressive. I don't have an application or a real purpose for anything I do on it but I think its a fascinating program.

New Google Earth 5.0 Takes You 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
By Scott Gilbertson
via Wired.com

Google has rolled out a major upgrade for Google Earth, the company’s desktop, geo-mapping browser. Google Earth 5 beta offers a host of new features, including interactive underwater details, historical maps, Mars togopography and the ability to easily record your Google Earth journeys.

The most exciting of the new features are the oceanography details. Google Earth has long offered minor, 2D topographical sketches of the Earth’s oceans, but the latest version adds the sort of details that Jacques Cousteau would have flipped for — you can now dive under the ocean and fly over undersea landmarks — mountains, trenches, shipwrecks and more.

The coverage isn’t complete, but it’s pretty easy to see where the details are and from there just simply keep zooming to dive underwater and swim around.

To go along with the new oceanography features, Google Earth has a few new data layers, including content from National Geographic and Cousteau Ocean World. Highlighted features include shipwrecks, maps of global chlorophyll levels, animal tracking data and more.

Article Continues HERE

What's New in Google Earth 5.0


Explore the Ocean in Google Earth 5.0

NASA Plans on Permanent Presence on the Moon

"'We're going back, and this time we're going to stay,'' S. Pete Worden, director of NASA Ames, said in remarks opening the lunar science conference. "This is the first step in settling the solar system.'' "

Apparently, we're going to start living on the moon....

A conference that officially started yesterday in Silicon Valley at NASA's Lunar Science Institute brings together over 400 of the world's top scientists to decide what we should do when we reach the moon.

"I think we should study rocks!"

"Well I think we should study water!"

"No you idiots! We should study the air up there!"

all together: "You Moron! There is no air up there!"

"oh...."

It probably won't sound like that but who knows right? Actually, the conference deals with what science should be done on the moon when we get there. "For the next three days, Silicon Valley will be the base for planning humankind's return to the moon, as more than 400 scientists from around the world assemble at NASA's Ames Research Center for a conference on what type of science should be done when astronauts revisit Earth's nearest neighbor.It could happen in the decade after NASA retires the space shuttle in 2010 and begins flying a new generation of rocket booster. And it won't be a temporary visit, NASA officials and scientists said Sunday. The United States, they said, focus on creating a permanent presence on the moon, using it as a training platform for missions to Mars and beyond. "


http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24050515-5001021,00.html