Google Maps the Oceans, Mars and Time

Giv­en that water cov­ers rough­ly 70% of our plan­et, it makes sense that Google Earth should take the oceans into account. Thanks to a part­ner­ship with the Cal­i­for­nia Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, Google Earth now offers, accord­ing to the com­pa­ny blog, detailed maps of the ocean floor “so you can actu­al­ly drop below the sur­face and explore the nooks and cran­nies of the seafloor in 3D.” You’ll also get “thou­sands of data points includ­ing videos and images of ocean life, details on the best surf spots, logs of real ocean expe­di­tions, and much more.”

In this lat­est release of Google Earth, you’ll also find detailed maps of the plan­et Mars, plus (rather amaz­ing­ly) some func­tion­al­i­ty that lets you see how land­scapes have changed over time. How does San Fran­cis­co look today as com­pared to 50 years ago? You should now be able to find out.

You can get more infor­ma­tion on these new addi­tions here on Google’s Blog. Also, you can see a video report from The Wall Street Jour­nal that gives you a visu­al taste of Google Earth 5.0.

Also, as a quick reminder, you can now fol­low us on Twit­ter!