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from the still-no-sign-of-my-secret-lair dept.
500 terabytes of data transmitted over 6 years (January 2010 through December 2015) have been processed into a seamless 3-dimensional world map of unprecedented accuracy. According to the German Aerospace Center (DLR, or Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt),
[...] The project required two satellites to fly in close proximity, as close as 120 meters apart as the project team establish breakthroughs in the technology for maneuvering the satellites. The precision flight allowed the data to be processed into maps with elevation accuracy of 1 meter. The 500 terabytes grew to 2.6 petabytes in processing, but the computers used met the challenge.
The map, officially known as the TanDEM-X global elevation model, can serve as an invaluable resource to earth scientists studying the planet we call home. But it offers amazing images to the general public as well. The image at top shows a landmark in Mauritania visible from space. Other images at the DLR site depict the craters of the nuclear tests in the desert northwest of Las Vegas, chain of volcanoes, and videos depicting the Elephant Foot Glacier and the Namib-Naukluft National Park.
And, from the DLR link:
New Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) methods will enable diverse data for exploration of the global ecosystem to be provided within short periods of time. The Tandem-L successor mission could provide a current elevation image of Earth's entire landmass every eight days and thereby capture dynamic processes in a timely manner. This would also make it possible to contribute to the review of international climate and environmental agreements.
A 1m resolution 3D map of the Earth is extraordinary.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:59PM
.. is it round, or flat?
(Score: 2) by weeds on Thursday October 13 2016, @02:17PM
If it was flat, a 2D map would have worked, Duh!
Get money out of politics! [mayday.us]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:51PM
If you ask my front tires, the world is just one long straight line.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @02:42PM
Wake up sheeple!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @03:53PM
Wake up sheeple!
Aaaargh! What are you doing! You fool! You'll doom us all!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday October 13 2016, @03:43PM
I am reminded of an article explaining that both theories are right enough for most purposes, and wrong for the pendants.
The Relativity of Wrong [tufts.edu]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:13PM
But the fundamental difference between the round-earth and flat-earth theories is not the quantitative difference in curvature, which is indeed small enough for many purposes, it's a qualitative difference in how points on the Earth are connected.
So calling it "nearly right" is just bullshit -- it's nearly right in one aspect, but completely wrong in another.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Thursday October 13 2016, @08:50PM
The theory lasted until we effectively explored the Earth while simultaneously increasing the speed, veracity, and quantity of information exchange.
Kind of hard to have a flat Earth when you can travel parallel to the equator and meet the people you left behind on your trip in front of you a few days later. At that point, any idiot can figure out "you're going in a circle Frank", and extrapolate from there.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by weeds on Thursday October 13 2016, @09:48PM
Love that article and quote it often!
Get money out of politics! [mayday.us]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @01:48AM
pedants
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @04:23PM
The answer to your question is a clear "Yes".
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 13 2016, @06:16PM
.. is it round, or flat?
Don't know. It was too busy raising it's kids.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @12:09AM
Your forehead, or Earth?
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday October 13 2016, @02:24PM
But it offers amazing images to the general public [treehugger.com] as well.
The link on "general public" is something about Google Maps and doesn't seem to be directly related.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Thursday October 13 2016, @04:33PM
I was unable to find publicly available data in the 5 minutes I searched. I think the data is publicly available with a service charge (100+ Euro). There is two free demos on the site for the Badlands National Park (USA) and Flinders Ranges (AUS). I'm not sure how many square km each covers, but they both are ~750MB each. I'm also not sure of the data format, it probably needs TanDEM software for viewing.
https://tandemx-science.dlr.de/ [tandemx-science.dlr.de]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @09:15PM
File size sounds reasonable. Badlands is about 9.8e8 sq meters. Their elevation is good to 1 meter, so if their cell size is roughly 1 sq meter, then if you take a byte per data element that work out to be 980 MB. Close enough, give-or-take.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:30PM
Yeah, where can I find 3d imagery of my house?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday October 13 2016, @02:47PM
I worked with US govt elevation data for the entire world at a 1km resolution. Has errors, and nothing on the ocean basins, sets all ocean positions at 0 meters elevation. Also they used the equirectangular projection, probably for its simplicity. But it's good enough for lots of fun.
A fun exercise is to use the elevation data to draw rivers. I wrote a simple little program to pick the lowest elevation adjacent to a given point, then seeded it with the location of the source of the Mississippi. It worked, but not very well. Jumped the track (valley, really) at the Illinois River, went up the Missouri and Ohio a few pixels, then when it reached Arkansas, it spread out all over the valley which was much wider and flatter from that point onwards. But a change to keep the river narrow there then ran into problems dealing with lakes, the Great Lakes being the worst when I tried the St. Lawrence watershed. It was a bit more difficult to create an algorithm for drawing rivers than I expected.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:17PM
Remember, the modern Mississippi has a lot of engineering keeping it flowing where we want it to flow, not where the topography wants it to flow. That's not the source of all your troubles, of course, but I'm sure it doesn't help!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @02:55PM
n/t
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Thursday October 13 2016, @06:41PM
And, it's already out of date [nationalgeographic.com]
(Score: 2) by iWantToKeepAnon on Thursday October 13 2016, @09:39PM
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @04:30AM
Can someone turn this into a detailed Minecraft map? That would be amazing and educational.