Watch this ultra-detailed animation of the seafloor

is a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hell or High Water: When Disaster Hits Home , a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals. The world has a more detailed map of the seafloor than ever before thanks to observations taken from space. NASA published a video this week showing a remarkably clear picture of the bottom of the ocean made possible thanks to new satellite technology. The face of the moon has been more thoroughly mapped than the depths of Earth’s oceans. But after NASA and French space agency CNES launched the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite in 2022, we’re starting to get a clearer look at what lies in the deep. In December, researchers published a revelatory seafloor map in the journal Science using one year of SWOT data. The face of the moon has been more thoroughly mapped than the depths of Earth’s oceans The satellite helps fill in vast gaps in data coll ... Read full article.