Scientists have created a new map of the ocean floor that is at least twice as accurate as the previous version and which reveals thousands of previously unknown mountains and extinct volcanoes—although the new image is still low-resolution. “You might think, that’s not so much better, but instead of seeing 5,000 old volcanoes down there, now we can see 10,000,” said study leader David Sandwell, a geophysics professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceonography at UC San Diego. He added that scientists currently “have maps of Mars that have 100 to 10,000 times more resolution than maps of the deep ocean.”
