> “I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organisation for environmental monitoring,” explains Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student at Tulane university in the US.
Oh, I thought he’s just gotten lost deep in the jungle (presumably looking for the free pizza that was left over from the undergrads’ seminar). But wow, 16’th page of Google, that really is uncharted territory.
kyle-rb 1 hours ago [-]
We shouldn't be rushing to explore space when we haven't even explored our own planet's ocean, or page 16 of google search results.
ghssds 10 minutes ago [-]
How many cities are lost every year? Can finding those cities help alleviate the housing crisis? Won't the inhabitants of those cities complain about disrupted postal service? I have so many questions!
OgsyedIE 2 hours ago [-]
This link: https://i.redd.it/gm8273jvjrk71.jpg is an map (outdated though, it dates to 2019 AFAIK) of how much of the Earth's surface has been mapped by google street view.
Is there a similar map product that shows how much of the Earth's surface has yet to be surveyed with lidar (or a suitable equivalent)? I would assume that areas with zero vegetation can be covered by satellite imagery but it is possible that the resolution is poor (for example, SRTM had a 30m resolution).
ipdashc 31 minutes ago [-]
That map, while interesting, seems entirely subjective - the whole appearance of the map can be determined by the thickness that you set the street view lines to, no?
bee_rider 42 seconds ago [-]
I guess you just lose the ability to distinguish between areas past some density, right? What would be a good way to improve it… maybe apply some filter, Lanzcos or whatever?
Animats 51 minutes ago [-]
"It is just 15 minutes hike from a major road near Xpujil where mostly Maya people now live."
And nobody sent a drone yet? The BBC has a jungle drone team.[1]
It won't be visible to the naked eye. Maya ruins like these are covered by centuries of overgrowth. Lidar scans can spot shapes buried under this overgrowth, but from the air it'll at best look like random hills of dirt.
Maybe if there are structures comparable to Calakmul (which is close to Xpujil), you'll see some rocks on a tall hill.
alberth 2 hours ago [-]
Lidar has been finding a lot of lost cities.
Not discounting this finding. It's just becoming more common.
HenryBemis 1 hours ago [-]
I've been watching the Ancient Apocalypse (S2) on Netflix and I had similar thoughts on discoveries. With drones and lidars we can discover so many of these villages/towns/cities, but the challenge would be to actually send boots on the ground and excavate into getting meaningful data/findings.
At the same time, the baddies (grave robbers, looters, etc.) can use the same tech and beat us to the game.
alberth 1 hours ago [-]
National Geographic even created a TV show 5-years ago specifically on this topic.
"Lost Cities with Albert Lin" (2019)
It's an 11-episode show where they use Lidar in each episode to find lost cities.
Sighs and resets the 'Days since we discovered a lost city using LiDAR' counter back to zero.
columbus567 2 hours ago [-]
Imagine putting that on a resume for a postdoc
- discovered lost Mayan city
amelius 9 minutes ago [-]
I was imagining what Indiana Jones would look like in this day and age.
potato3732842 2 hours ago [-]
Flock will hire him as a consultant when they develop their upcoming "fine people for unpermitted garden sheds" service.
(joking, but sadly not joking)
SoftTalker 1 hours ago [-]
Cities and counties have been using traditional aerial photography for that for a long time now.
vips7L 1 hours ago [-]
I have friends who work in InsuranceTech and they use satellite images of houses when someone apply for home owners insurance. They've said it flags people with trampolines all the time.
jll29 2 hours ago [-]
I was going to say: that's a thesis result sorted - check.
77pt77 52 minutes ago [-]
It's going to get as common as
> New exoplanet discovered
Very soon.
And therefore unworthy of barely being mentioned.
bkandel 1 hours ago [-]
How is this by accident? He was specifically looking for datasets for this purpose and found a good one, then loaded it into a program to find man-made structures.
dang 5 minutes ago [-]
Ok, we've taken the accident out of the title above.
baq 50 minutes ago [-]
Page 16 of google.
He might have been the first person to see those datasets except the ones who published them.
advisedwang 2 hours ago [-]
Once again, the sensationalized "discovery" of a "lost" by people that fly over with lidar and never talk to the locals.
Wow archaeology should be rife for disruption if you can just go around and ask locals. Seems like anyone with gumption could be the next great scientist.
Or maybe one of those locals could be. I wonder what stops them?
77pt77 51 minutes ago [-]
Locals lie.
Like a lot!
They even pretend to be able to read ancient languages/scripts when in reality that are just making stuff up.
mitthrowaway2 2 hours ago [-]
Can the locals draw a map of these lost cities? Or are they just aware that there are many lost cities, but without knowing exactly where they are?
And for that matter, if the locals did know the specifics but weren't spreading that knowledge, then it still can constitute a discovery.
"Discovery" can mean revealing knowledge that was previously known to insiders, eg. if I say "I discovered an underground smuggling ring and reported it to the police", you probably wouldn't argue that "you didn't discover anything; the smugglers already knew about it".
romwell 1 hours ago [-]
>"Discovery" can mean revealing knowledge that was previously known to insiders, eg. if I say "I discovered an underground smuggling ring and reported it to the police", you probably wouldn't argue that "you didn't discover anything; the smugglers already knew about it".
Just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying this point.
Newspaper Headline:
Discoverer of Underground Smuggling Ring Proven a Fraud: Ring Leader Says He Discovered It First"
OgsyedIE 2 hours ago [-]
What is the proportion of villages where surveying the locals will lead to documenting an abandoned city that is otherwise only known to the locals?
If only 2% of villages have an undiscovered profitable heritage, then 98% of surveys will show no results, which makes it difficult for anthropological surveys to compete with lidar for grant funding, especially when lidar is still new enough to seem "sexy" and "sci-fi".
dylan604 2 hours ago [-]
Throw in some AI processing of the LIDAR data, and watch those funding dollars flood in!!
empath75 1 hours ago [-]
"Discovery" probably isn't the right word, but the important part isn't knowing that something is there, the important part is telling the rest of the world about it.
SoftTalker 2 hours ago [-]
I love the idea that there might have been fully technological civilizations of humans on earth that have been totally lost to time. I know that the Maya were not that, but go back 10,000 years maybe, who knows?
jfactorial 44 minutes ago [-]
Dinosaurs lived on Earth for about 100,000,000 years, at least 50 times as long as our species. Perhaps some dinosaurs were the most advanced species our planet has ever seen.
That means we squandered almost 10,000 years of human history before humans became an advanced civilization. We could have invented flight, discovered antibiotics, etc five thousand years ago.
superxpro12 1 hours ago [-]
Is "love" really the right descriptor here? The implications are truly depressing.
SoftTalker 1 hours ago [-]
Yes, it would be a sobering reminder on how essentially powerless we are in the face of global calamity. You see this recognized in religions and in pre-technological societies, but few of us in the modern era do.
ks2048 1 hours ago [-]
No need to get depressed about an idea with zero evidence.
spaceman_2020 57 minutes ago [-]
The oldest city that we’ve found to date was buried - intentionally - under a mound of earth.
There could be dozens of these sites
Lidar the planet
1 hours ago [-]
dylan604 2 hours ago [-]
“I was on something like page 16 of Google search "
whoa, I had no idea there were that many pages in a google search. that's some serious googlefu to get that kind of a result. I guess it definitely says something about the researcher too to continue on that deep.
I'm expecting that comment to have been hyperbolic though
jeffwask 51 minutes ago [-]
The first 10 are all SEO and AI junk now.
Rendered at 21:37:35 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Oh, I thought he’s just gotten lost deep in the jungle (presumably looking for the free pizza that was left over from the undergrads’ seminar). But wow, 16’th page of Google, that really is uncharted territory.
Is there a similar map product that shows how much of the Earth's surface has yet to be surveyed with lidar (or a suitable equivalent)? I would assume that areas with zero vegetation can be covered by satellite imagery but it is possible that the resolution is poor (for example, SRTM had a 30m resolution).
And nobody sent a drone yet? The BBC has a jungle drone team.[1]
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3P6MX7bbl0Y5SSnvJW...
Maybe if there are structures comparable to Calakmul (which is close to Xpujil), you'll see some rocks on a tall hill.
Not discounting this finding. It's just becoming more common.
At the same time, the baddies (grave robbers, looters, etc.) can use the same tech and beat us to the game.
"Lost Cities with Albert Lin" (2019)
It's an 11-episode show where they use Lidar in each episode to find lost cities.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10366494/
- discovered lost Mayan city
(joking, but sadly not joking)
> New exoplanet discovered
Very soon.
And therefore unworthy of barely being mentioned.
He might have been the first person to see those datasets except the ones who published them.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/did-recent-expedit...
"Don't be snarky."
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Or maybe one of those locals could be. I wonder what stops them?
Like a lot!
They even pretend to be able to read ancient languages/scripts when in reality that are just making stuff up.
And for that matter, if the locals did know the specifics but weren't spreading that knowledge, then it still can constitute a discovery.
"Discovery" can mean revealing knowledge that was previously known to insiders, eg. if I say "I discovered an underground smuggling ring and reported it to the police", you probably wouldn't argue that "you didn't discover anything; the smugglers already knew about it".
Just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying this point.
Newspaper Headline:
Discoverer of Underground Smuggling Ring Proven a Fraud: Ring Leader Says He Discovered It First"
If only 2% of villages have an undiscovered profitable heritage, then 98% of surveys will show no results, which makes it difficult for anthropological surveys to compete with lidar for grant funding, especially when lidar is still new enough to seem "sexy" and "sci-fi".
https://pbfcomics.com/comics/dinosaur-meteors/
There could be dozens of these sites
Lidar the planet
whoa, I had no idea there were that many pages in a google search. that's some serious googlefu to get that kind of a result. I guess it definitely says something about the researcher too to continue on that deep.
I'm expecting that comment to have been hyperbolic though