The above picture is what they call a "CAT Scan" of a section of the earth. Basically you send measure the speed and distance that seismic waves move through land. Combining a large amount of data yielded the above. The colored sections are places where the speed was measured to be faster than normal and the waves traveled farther than usual. Why would this be? Well on the outer edge of the circle, there is ocean. Waves move faster through and farther in water. So from this we can determine that there is water where there is color. Okay, great, except, do you notice anything weird? Well, there is water... underground.
The article which I read this from was entitled: "Massive New Ocean Discovered Deep Inside Earth's Interior". Wow, an underground ocean. This is from a science/tech site called the Daily Galaxy. I get their feed delivered to my RSS reader. It's generally good stuff, however this is unacceptable.
Why is this unacceptable? Let's go to their source; a press release from Washington University in St. Louis. The story here is entitled: "3-D seismic model of vast water reservoir revealed". If you read the Daily Galaxy article, you are lead to believe that they discovered an underwater ocean! However, this quote is found in the WashU press release: "If you combine the volume of this anomaly with the fact that the rock can hold up to about 0.1 percent of water, that works out to be about an Arctic Ocean's worth of water."
There is a major difference between "underground ocean" and "rock that holds some water". Please note, that I am not knocking the science here, just the way it was presented by the Daily Galaxy. They do include the quote: "The researchers estimate that up to 0.1 percent of the rock sinking down into the Earth's mantle in that part of the world is water, which works out to about an Arctic Ocean's worth of water." In my opinion, that's insufficient, it does not clearly state what is taking place here. How could this have been done better you may ask. Let's move on to National Geographic. Their article is entitled: "Huge Underground "Ocean" Found Beneath Asia", similar to that of the article from the Daily Galaxy. I appreciate that the word 'ocean' is in quotes, but the key difference here is the article itself. I quote from the fifth line:
"But nobody will be exploring this sea by submarine. The water is locked in moisture-containing rocks 400 to 800 miles (700 to 1,400 kilometers) beneath the surface.
It isn't an ocean. [The water] is a very low percentage [of the rock], probably less than 0.1 percent."
Science writing is important, it lets people who don't spend their lives working in science understand what's happening in the science world. However, we must realize that people doing "science writing" are essentially acting as translators. It is very important that the message is not skewed! Before I read the source, I was left with the impression that we discovered a new ocean!
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