Detecting many mountain ranges under the sea

American and European researchers claim to have discovered thousands of new mountains emerging on our planet. All of them are at least 1.5 km high.

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The reason why we don't know about their appearance until now is because all the mountains are located on the ocean floor. Researcher Dave Sandwell from Scripps Institution of Oceanography (USA) and colleagues discovered the existence of these mountains in the water using radar satellites and publishing their findings in journals Science Magazine.

Professor Sandwell said: "In the previous radar data collection, we could see things higher than 2 km and 5,000 mountains on the sea. With the new data set, we have not yet completed. The results of the study, but I guess it is possible to observe things 1.5 km high . The number of underwater mountains is increasing with exponentiality and the size decreases. discovering another 25,000 mountains in addition to 5,000 known mountains. "

According to experts, it is important to know where the underwater mountains are important for the conservation and management of the fisheries industry, as wild creatures tend to cluster around these oceanic peaks. . The roughness of the seabed is also important, as it drives the flow and promotes the blending - the essential characteristics for understanding how the oceans circulate heat and impact the climate.

However, our understanding of the seabed is very poor, as evidenced by the difficulties we have encountered when searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines aircraft MH370, which is believed to have crashed. Western Australia. The problem is, salty seawater is opaque before every standard technique is being used to map terrestrial mountains.

Sound locators dropped from ships can gather very high resolution information by capturing - transmitting sound feedback to undersea structures. However, this method is only investigated by less than 10% of the world's oceans, because it requires too much effort.

The alternative is an indirect method, using satellites equipped with altimeter. Most of the world maps on the overall layout of the undersea mountains are based on this method. The latest discovery of the existence of thousands of ocean-bottom mountains comes from the use of satellites by the US Navy and the European Aerospace Agency (ESA).

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