8 ms·

Geological Insights from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Search

160 points by car 10y ago

daleroberts 10y ago
Really nice article, my mind is always blown by all the cool shit we keep on learning about our Earth. And then the article became all the more sweeter when I realised that it all this work was done by people I know at Geoscience Australia. Very cool.
- aynsof 10y ago
  Hello from GA! If this sort of stuff is interesting to you, keep an eye out at: http://eos.ga.gov.au http://eos.ga.gov.au And we've just started an engineering blog which might be of interest to the HN crowd: https://tech.ga.gov.au https://tech.ga.gov.au
  - daleroberts 10y ago
    Hello from ANU! I've actually been collaborating on a number of projects with GA the last couple of years :-)
Baeocystin 10y ago
Fascinating. The reason for the mapping is tragic, but I hope some of the families so affected can take some degree of solace from the knowledge gained thus.
- DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
  Cynically I imagine this data will be invaluable to energy companies looking for potential new oil drilling sites - I'm not sure if I'd want my legacy to be the continuation of fossil-fuels...
  - jofer 10y ago
    As a former exploration geologist on the petroleum side and marine geophysicist on the academic side - No, this data isn't very useful for petroleum exploration at all. Most of the deep ocean basins have absolutely zero oil. To create thermogenic hydrocarbons, you need thick sediments. You can make methane biogenically without significant sediment cover, and that's important sometimes, but you cannot make oil that way. Oil is what drives exploration far away from population centers. The abyssal plain you're seeing in that data is mostly exposed oceanic crust. There's almost no sediment cover. No sediments --> no exploration potential. There's one narrow continental fragment that could have significant sediment cover. However, it's highly unlikely that that's prospective. (If you're curious, I'm happy to elaborate, but it will take a bit of explanation.) There is one way this data will be used for petroleum exploration. It aids our understanding of the tectonic evolution of the area, which in turn aids petroleum exploration. However, if you're going to take a moral stance against that, you also need to a moral stance against every scientific advance in every field. They all aid the oil industry indirectly. (Ditto for software.)
    - stochastician 10y ago
      Yes please elaborate, this is fascinating! Can you recommend any good undergraduate textbooks on the subject, especially for someone with a quantitative background (PhD in ML-adjacent field)?
      - jofer 10y ago
        If you're interested specifically in the petroleum side, I've heard "Introduction to Petroleum Exploration for Non-geologists" by Robert Stonely is good. There are probably more up-to-date books out there, though. For the more general geology portion, if you're wanting something that's a bit more detailed, but still very approachable, "Evolution of the Earth" by Prothero and Dott is absolutely fantastic. You can probably find a slightly older paperback edition quite cheaply, as well. If you're really okay with a quantitative approach, Turcotte & Schubert's "Geodynamics" walks through an impressive amount of basic tectonics in a "let's do the back of the envelope calculations" manner. It's the most dog-eared book on my shelf. It's incredibly useful. However, it's a graduate level textbook, and it assumes you have at least a basic understanding of geological processes and terminology. It would be a very tough way to dive in.
astrodust 10y ago
That's an exponential increase in resolution, but it's also amazing how the gravity-derived maps fit in so well with the sonar-derived ones. That's some serious validation of the gravity approach, as limited as it is.
- wiredfool 10y ago
  Given that about 10% of the ocean has been mapped like this, I'd bet that portion has been used as a calibration for the gravity based dataset.
  - jofer 10y ago
    The gravity-based methods require the ship track data as well -- they're not fully independent methods. (i.e. not only are they calibrated to it, ship-track bathymetry is actually half of the input data for gravity-derived bathymetry.) It's still really quite amazing how well it matches in an area that's pretty far from dense ship-track bathymetry data.
darknoon 10y ago
Does anyone know if the dataset is available publicly?
- ajdlinux 10y ago
  According to http://www.ga.gov.au/about/projects/marine/mh370-bathymetric-survey/mh370-bathymetric-survey http://www.ga.gov.au/about/projects/marine/mh370-bathymetric... "Data collected as part of the bathymetric survey will be publicly released by Geoscience Australia in due course."
speps 10y ago
Is the raw data available somewhere? EDIT: found a lot more info (and videos) here : http://www.ga.gov.au/about/projects/marine/mh370-bathymetric-survey http://www.ga.gov.au/about/projects/marine/mh370-bathymetric...
qeternity 10y ago
I am always amazed at how relatively little we know about the ocean floor.
avar 10y ago
I wondered what it would cost to get this detail for the entirety of the ocean. They say they mapped an area the size of New Zealand, which is around 250k km^2. According to a quick Google search the total area of the oceans is 360 million km^2, and according to a Guardian article I found[1] the subsurface search cost 180 million AU$. (360/0.25)*180 =~ 250 billion AU$ That's around 190 billion USD, not even 0.1 Iraq wars, and that's before considering any economies of scale. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/17/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-search-called-off https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/17/malaysia-airli...
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  It's futile to attempt to value things as fractions of a war. While typically the dollar is a useful metric for the worth that society ascribes to something, public opinion on the importance of the Iraq war and the federal budget for the military are radically different. The annual budget for the entire USGS is $1.2 billion. NOAA has a budget of $5.6 billion. NASA has a budget of $19.5 billion. The NSF has a budget of about $2 billion. If these agencies dropped everything else and invested purely in this map, it would take about 5 years to create it. Or, yeah, you could buy not even 0.1 Iraq wars with those 5 years, if that sounded better...
  - stdbrouw 10y ago
    I'm not sure I understand: why is it futile to attempt to value things as fractions of a war given that public opinion on that particular war is divided?
    - 67726e 10y ago
      It wasn't nearly as divided at the start of the war.
    - krona 10y ago
      Because it's poor accounting. Given the scale of the US military and it's annual expenditure just existing, to make a fair comparison you should at least take account of the marginal cost of the war, not the total cost. There is also the opportunity cost to take account of, but that's much harder (impossible?) to put an accurate figure on.
car 10y ago
In light of how little we know, it's great to see that there are philanthropists supporting oceanographic research, specifically a shout out to Eric & Wendy Schmidt, https://schmidtocean.org https://schmidtocean.org.

160 points by car 10y ago

Really nice article, my mind is always blown by all the cool shit we keep on learning about our Earth. And then the article became all the more sweeter when I realised that it all this work was done by people I know at Geoscience Australia. Very cool.

aynsof 10y ago
Hello from GA! If this sort of stuff is interesting to you, keep an eye out at: http://eos.ga.gov.au http://eos.ga.gov.au And we've just started an engineering blog which might be of interest to the HN crowd: https://tech.ga.gov.au https://tech.ga.gov.au
- daleroberts 10y ago
  Hello from ANU! I've actually been collaborating on a number of projects with GA the last couple of years :-)

Baeocystin 10y ago

Fascinating. The reason for the mapping is tragic, but I hope some of the families so affected can take some degree of solace from the knowledge gained thus.

DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
Cynically I imagine this data will be invaluable to energy companies looking for potential new oil drilling sites - I'm not sure if I'd want my legacy to be the continuation of fossil-fuels...
- jofer 10y ago
  As a former exploration geologist on the petroleum side and marine geophysicist on the academic side - No, this data isn't very useful for petroleum exploration at all. Most of the deep ocean basins have absolutely zero oil. To create thermogenic hydrocarbons, you need thick sediments. You can make methane biogenically without significant sediment cover, and that's important sometimes, but you cannot make oil that way. Oil is what drives exploration far away from population centers. The abyssal plain you're seeing in that data is mostly exposed oceanic crust. There's almost no sediment cover. No sediments --> no exploration potential. There's one narrow continental fragment that could have significant sediment cover. However, it's highly unlikely that that's prospective. (If you're curious, I'm happy to elaborate, but it will take a bit of explanation.) There is one way this data will be used for petroleum exploration. It aids our understanding of the tectonic evolution of the area, which in turn aids petroleum exploration. However, if you're going to take a moral stance against that, you also need to a moral stance against every scientific advance in every field. They all aid the oil industry indirectly. (Ditto for software.)
  - stochastician 10y ago
    Yes please elaborate, this is fascinating! Can you recommend any good undergraduate textbooks on the subject, especially for someone with a quantitative background (PhD in ML-adjacent field)?
    - jofer 10y ago
      If you're interested specifically in the petroleum side, I've heard "Introduction to Petroleum Exploration for Non-geologists" by Robert Stonely is good. There are probably more up-to-date books out there, though. For the more general geology portion, if you're wanting something that's a bit more detailed, but still very approachable, "Evolution of the Earth" by Prothero and Dott is absolutely fantastic. You can probably find a slightly older paperback edition quite cheaply, as well. If you're really okay with a quantitative approach, Turcotte & Schubert's "Geodynamics" walks through an impressive amount of basic tectonics in a "let's do the back of the envelope calculations" manner. It's the most dog-eared book on my shelf. It's incredibly useful. However, it's a graduate level textbook, and it assumes you have at least a basic understanding of geological processes and terminology. It would be a very tough way to dive in.

astrodust 10y ago

That's an exponential increase in resolution, but it's also amazing how the gravity-derived maps fit in so well with the sonar-derived ones. That's some serious validation of the gravity approach, as limited as it is.

wiredfool 10y ago
Given that about 10% of the ocean has been mapped like this, I'd bet that portion has been used as a calibration for the gravity based dataset.
- jofer 10y ago
  The gravity-based methods require the ship track data as well -- they're not fully independent methods. (i.e. not only are they calibrated to it, ship-track bathymetry is actually half of the input data for gravity-derived bathymetry.) It's still really quite amazing how well it matches in an area that's pretty far from dense ship-track bathymetry data.

darknoon 10y ago

Does anyone know if the dataset is available publicly?

ajdlinux 10y ago
According to http://www.ga.gov.au/about/projects/marine/mh370-bathymetric-survey/mh370-bathymetric-survey http://www.ga.gov.au/about/projects/marine/mh370-bathymetric... "Data collected as part of the bathymetric survey will be publicly released by Geoscience Australia in due course."

speps 10y ago

Is the raw data available somewhere? EDIT: found a lot more info (and videos) here : http://www.ga.gov.au/about/projects/marine/mh370-bathymetric-survey http://www.ga.gov.au/about/projects/marine/mh370-bathymetric...

qeternity 10y ago

I am always amazed at how relatively little we know about the ocean floor.

avar 10y ago

I wondered what it would cost to get this detail for the entirety of the ocean. They say they mapped an area the size of New Zealand, which is around 250k km^2. According to a quick Google search the total area of the oceans is 360 million km^2, and according to a Guardian article I found[1] the subsurface search cost 180 million AU$. (360/0.25)*180 =~ 250 billion AU$ That's around 190 billion USD, not even 0.1 Iraq wars, and that's before considering any economies of scale. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/17/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-search-called-off https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/17/malaysia-airli...

LeifCarrotson 10y ago
It's futile to attempt to value things as fractions of a war. While typically the dollar is a useful metric for the worth that society ascribes to something, public opinion on the importance of the Iraq war and the federal budget for the military are radically different. The annual budget for the entire USGS is $1.2 billion. NOAA has a budget of $5.6 billion. NASA has a budget of $19.5 billion. The NSF has a budget of about $2 billion. If these agencies dropped everything else and invested purely in this map, it would take about 5 years to create it. Or, yeah, you could buy not even 0.1 Iraq wars with those 5 years, if that sounded better...
- stdbrouw 10y ago
  I'm not sure I understand: why is it futile to attempt to value things as fractions of a war given that public opinion on that particular war is divided?
  - 67726e 10y ago
    It wasn't nearly as divided at the start of the war.
  - krona 10y ago
    Because it's poor accounting. Given the scale of the US military and it's annual expenditure just existing, to make a fair comparison you should at least take account of the marginal cost of the war, not the total cost. There is also the opportunity cost to take account of, but that's much harder (impossible?) to put an accurate figure on.

car 10y ago

In light of how little we know, it's great to see that there are philanthropists supporting oceanographic research, specifically a shout out to Eric & Wendy Schmidt, https://schmidtocean.org https://schmidtocean.org.