Have researchers found an undersea road to the lost city of Atlantis?

Not each street results in Rome.

Some paths look like headed to the middle of the ocean — like one just lately noticed by scientists within the Pacific that they dubbed the “street to Atlantis.”

Late final month, oceanographers aboard the EV Nautilus vessel had been out exploring the ground of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine Nationwide Monument, a submarine vary of volcanic mountains off the coast of Hawaii, after they got here throughout what seemed like a well-preserved brick street on the backside of the ocean.

On April 29, the researchers had been amazed to see such a construction 3,376 ft underwater, close to the highest of Nootka Seamount. The invention, as a part of the Luʻuaeaahikiikekumu expedition, was captured on video in the course of the group’s 24/7 livestream on YouTube.

“It’s the street to Atlantis,” one scientist is heard saying within the background of the footage.

Oceanographers had been exploring off the coast of Hawaii after they noticed what seemed to be a well-preserved brick street on the backside of the ocean.

YouTube / EVNautilus

The researchers had been amazed to see such a construction 3,376 ft underwater, close to the highest of Nootka Seamount.

YouTube / EVNautilus

Solely about 3% of the 583,000 sq. miles of seafloor the place the trail was noticed has been beforehand mapped by scientists.

YouTube / EVNautilus

“That’s a very distinctive construction,” one other added. 

“That is the yellow brick street,” a 3rd researcher chimed.

“Are you kidding me? That is loopy,” an extra voice exclaimed.

Solely about 3% of the 583,000 sq. miles throughout the Papahānaumokuākea Marine Nationwide Monument space has been recorded, though its peaks are identified to rise over 16,000 ft from the seabed and summit simply 200 ft beneath the floor of the water.

If the misplaced metropolis of Atlantis had been actual, it could have fallen close to the Strait of Gibraltar within the Mediterranean, in keeping with Plato’s writings.

Dwell Science

Depiction of writer L. Frank Baum’s yellow brick street resulting in Oz as depicted by journal illustrator John Rea Neill, in regards to the yr 1900.

Getty Photographs

The legend of Atlantis dates again to Plato’s “Dialogues,” written about 360 B.C. — the initially information of the misplaced metropolis in historical past. Within the thinker’s story, the town was a metaphor for the corruption of energy, wealth and trade. In different phrases, it was created strictly as a plot system, and never the stuff of prehistoric folklore. Furthermore, there isn’t a hint of archaeologic or geologic proof that a sunken metropolis ever existed.

Students are additionally fairly certain that the realm of Oz existed solely within the thoughts of “The Great Wizard of Oz” writer L. Frank Baum, who printed the unique story in 1900.

Hyaloclastite, seen right here ribboned between the margins of lava rock, is an accumulation of sea glass fashioned throughout volcanic eruptions below water or ice.

USGS

Researchers aboard the Nautilus had their enjoyable after they dubbed the exceptional clip “Comply with the ‘Yellow Brick Highway’ to Geologic Options of Liliʻuokalani Ridge Seamounts” for social media, however defined the bricklike formation’s true nature within the caption.

“What might appear like a ‘yellow brick street’ to the legendary metropolis of Atlantis is basically an instance of historical energetic volcanic geology,” they wrote.

What the staff had really seen was later recognized as hyaloclastite, “a volcanic rock fashioned in high-energy eruptions the place many rock fragments settle to the seabed,” they defined, whereas the “distinctive 90-degree fractures” that made it appear like stone laid for a street are seemingly a results of “heating and cooling stress from a number of eruptions.”

The present mission, funded by the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, set out for a deeper understanding of how the northwestern Hawaiian Islands had been fashioned. In addition they hope to spot wholesome communities of coral and sponge, that are below risk globally.