Explore the Ocean, Travel Through Time, and Visit Mars with Google Earth

: Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Google Earth 5.0 is here, and it brings with it quite a few drastic improvements.

For starters, Google Earth 5.0 has an ocean – and we don’t just mean a big blue spot. Starting today, there is a much more detailed map of the ocean’s floor. You can now actually go below the surface and the seafloor in breath-taking 3-D.

While you’re down there, you can explore 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. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find Atlantis.

In addition to Ocean, Google has also rolled out some other new features that will change the way users interact with Google Earth and use it to communicate with the world.

Historical Imagery: Until today, Google Earth displayed only one image of a given place at a given time. With this new feature, you can now move back and forth in time to reveal imagery from years and even decades past, revealing changes over time. Try flying south of San Francisco in Google Earth and turning on the new time slider (click the “clock” icon in the toolbar) to witness the transformation of Silicon Valley from a farming community to the tech capital of the world over the past 50 years or so.

Touring: One of the key challenges we have faced in developing Google Earth has been making it easier for people to tell stories. People have created wonderful layers to share with the world, but they have often asked for a way to guide others through them. The Touring feature makes it simple to create an easily sharable, narrated, fly-through tour just by clicking the record button and navigating through your tour destinations.

3D Mars: This is the latest stop in our virtual tour of the galaxies, made possible by a collaboration with NASA. By selecting “Mars” from the toolbar in Google Earth, you can access a 3D map of the Red Planet featuring the latest high-resolution imagery, 3D terrain, and annotations showing landing sites and lots of other interesting features.

If you’re hungry to see even more, check out the video tour below (I can’t be sure, but I’m almost positive this is the same song that they play in my local Weis supermarket – I thought it was their song – must be ‘free use’)…