“It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.” – Hunter S Thompson

More than three quarters of the Earth is covered in water, and yet scientists know 100 times more about the topography of Mars than they do of the Earth’s surface. That bears worth repeating: currently, there is more scientific knowledge about the topography and environment of a different planet, than there is about the planet we currently inhabit.

The sea is often described as a place of lore, the primordial abyss that will not hesitate to swallow people back into the nature that spawned their ancestors hundreds of millions of years ago. Yet, as self-elected intellectual land mammals, the fear must be tamed, guided, and coerced so that scientists can discover and unlock the mysteries that lurk below the penetrating sunlight.

Scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at U.C. San Diego have been working overtime delving into the high tech analysis of the ocean floors using satellite imagery. The new study offers news analysis regarding plate tectonics, gravity density, and will now be able to provide a high definition version of maps of the ocean floor.

“One of the most important uses of this new marine gravity field will be to improve the estimates of seafloor depth in the 80 percent of the oceans that remains uncharted or is buried beneath thick sediment,” said the report.

“The team has developed and proved a powerful new tool for high-resolution exploration of regional seafloor structure and geophysical processes,” says Don Rice, program director in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences. “This capability will allow us to revisit unsolved questions and to pinpoint where to focus future exploratory work.”

Beyond scientific advances, improved seafloor mapping is also crucial for improved navigation purposes, such as calculating trajectories of underwater objects such as submarines and torpedoes.

“The use of satellite altimeter data… improved estimates of marine gravity and bathymetry world-wide, including in remote areas,” said Joan Cleveland, Office of Naval Research (ONR) deputy director, Ocean Sensing and Systems Division. “Accurate bathymetry and identifying the location of seamounts are important to safe navigation for the U.S. Navy.”