[Skywise]

I recently discovered that one of our residents has unknowingly helped debunk a UFO conspiracy theory.

Someone noticed an underwater structure off the Malibu coast using Google Earth, and decided it was an underwater UFO base because it couldn't possibly be a natural formation. It's too perfectly oval and flat topped, and has supporting columns on one side, and it's too close to a military naval base.

Fact is, the columns are an artifact of the low resolution bathymetry data being interpolated by the software. I recognized it immediately from my own experience playing with GIS software and digital elevation models.

But what does Chris have to do with all of this? I was listening to the Coast to Coast AM show the other night and one of the guests is a newspaper journalist who wrote about the theory. He pointed out a paper published by GSA that shows the area was studied and already known. And named... Sycamore Knoll.

A link to the paper was provided and it turned out to be,

Potential earthquake faults offshore Southern California,
from the eastern Santa Barbara Channel south to Dana Point
- Fisher, Sorlien, Sliter, 2009.

Here's a link to the newspaper article.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/19...93186.html

In the article is a link to the paper. In the paper, the authors conducted seismic reflection surveys, and one survey line runs right across the knoll. Clearly, it's a natural structure.

So is Chris going add "UFO Theory Debunker" to his CV?

Brian