Wreck of Australian Warship HMAS Sydney Found? 193
Mendy writes "Tim Ankers, a British archaeologist, claims to have found the wreck of the HMAS Sydney, lost with all hands in the Indian Ocean during World War II. He says that he's done this from the comfort of his home using software he wrote called Merlindown, which can analyze satellite photographs at different wavelengths to 'peer 75 meters into the earth and 16,000 meters beneath the seas.'"
Too good to be true I think (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps he is going public with this in hopes that someone will want to purchase the software for treasure hunting.
Ground based sonar (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, tech progresses, but 75 m from outer space using only UV, Xray, and Infra photography? I am very skeptical.
On another note... if this new process is true then construction will have to pretty much halt in many areas of Southern California. There are stringent rules in place governing building on areas that contain either significant fossil remains or any sort of Native American relics. Several hundred million USD per year is spent on archeological surveys to determine what may be beneath a construction site. Various companies have reputations for finding little if anything, and so environmental groups sometimes employ other companies that usually find a good deal of things that will prevent construction.
Decently resolved pictures up to 75 m below the surface will prove what some archeos in the field already believe to be true... under current laws it should be almost impossible to build anywhere in the greater L.A. area because of the shear volume of fossil record.
They pulled two gigantic whales out of a toll road excavation in the middle of the desert... etc.
Regards.
Uh, it is a big deal. A very big deal... (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you have any idea of how valuable salvage rights of all the sunken wrecks that this tool could potentially uncover would be? No? Well, here's a clue:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/66719
That's one wreck. Worth half a billion dollars. Makes you think, doesn't it?
16,000 meters beneath the sea? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Whhhaaaaa? Aussies had a Navy? (Score:5, Interesting)
If an "amateur" can do this ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless, of course, a British archeologist has outdone the entire technical expertise of the NSA and CIA. But that would make them look pretty much like bumbling civil servants rather than the sleuthing savants that we are led to believe they are.
Re:Ground based sonar (Score:3, Interesting)
[sigh] Time to add another layer (Score:3, Interesting)
Australian military was in Europe ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Australia had, and still has, excellent soldiers. Mac Arthur was an egomaniac and no one other than Mac Arthur got credit for anything, regardless of whether they were American or Australian. However things are not as simple as you suggest. Australia had many of its forces in Europe trying to save England. Recall that the war had started in Europe years earlier than in the Pacific and England was just barely hanging on and absolutely needed Canadian, Australian, South African, etc forces. When Mac Arthur was ordered/tricked to leave the Philippines he was expecting to mount a counterattack to rescue the American forces left behind. When he arrived in Australia he found no counterattack/rescue force, not even enough of a force to defend Australia should Japan attempt a major invasion. The Australian generals were planning to trade most of the country for time and only defend the south eastern (?) quarter, to be fair that was where most of the population and development was located.
hard to believe.. (Score:5, Interesting)
We found that the best mechanisms for finding as yet unfound wrecks were plain old research. We requested and got a copy of the microfilms of the WW2 records for the area from the US Archives. Slowly and meticulously (reading Microfilm projected onto the fridge door), following each report, we ultimately ended up finding around half a dozen new wrecks. The report of a Corsair that clipped a tree, while trying to line up for the airstrip, and spun into the bay, prompted a search for a tree stump, and and following a logical path to the airstrip, a probably location - sure enough a deep dive (180 ft - lots of decompression) found it. Biggest coup was the talk of an abandoned airstrip on a remote island in the Solomon Islands. Sure enough, worked out roughly where, found a single like reference to the "local name" for it, and sure enough, found three WWII fighters still sitting at the end of a punched metal runway, as if waiting for orders...
As someone said, an archaeologist developing software that the spooks, and/or mining types haven't been able to. That's a bit far fetched.
I would suggest "text scans" of historical documents may be more useful.
q
Re:but water is opaque (Score:2, Interesting)
A favourite trick of conmen (Score:3, Interesting)
One of his other favourite cons was the Deep Sea Gold..... While running the startup-con, he was also trying to start this con on the same investors.
He would claim to have intimate knowledge of an ancient wreck somewhere. There was the lure of lots of gold. All that the investors needed to do was stump up some cash to hire dive-boats and a little sundry, and they would get all the gold retrieved.
This guy had fake Lordships [where you buy a tiny plot of land in Britain and get the title] and fake ids. But in essence the fact that the wreck was out to sea and the investors didn't have an independent source of verification made the con a good one. The investors put in lots of cash, some deep sea divers were hired, but the fictitious wreck remained undiscovered long enough for the conman to drain all the cash from the investors. Then the conman disappeared back to whatever country he had never fled to before. No cash, now wreck, no gold, no money.
So now I'm always wary of deep sea discoveries... Special software to spot wrecks from the comfort of Google Maps and your couch??? The conmen will have a field-day if people start to believe this. Not saying this guy is wrong, but how soon until other people leech his achievements?
Reliability of sources (Score:3, Interesting)
While I agree that this story sounds like nonsense, you have probably found the most unreliable source for a rejection: A competitor who is receiving public funds to achieve the same goal.