As a good friend once told me, "never do math in public!"

My apologies again for the conversion error. Popped things into my dashboard too quickly. It is indeed thousands of feet.

My mistake on the meters to feet - conversion error. Going to sea takes thousands of dollars per day (estimate is around $25,000 to $35,000 per day to operate a modern oceanographic research vessel), so we don't have the frequency of repeat measurements for all areas of the world's oceans that we would like. And it takes going to sea in order to get the most accurate measurements because satellites cannot see through the water in order to give us the accuracy that we need (hence we use acoustics at sea). We only have about 5-10% of the global seafloor mapped to the highest resolutions that we'd like so, yes, new "holes" can indeed be found. New discoveries are still being made. We do have standards in terms of how these measurements are made as related to the speed of sound in water according to its salinity and temperature. So we should be able to map the same areas with different devices and get close to the same measurements of depth. For a nice overview of basic principles, you might enjoy http://1.usa.gov/jtUT7v or http://ocean.tamu.edu/Quarterdeck/1998/3/sager-1.html

I am a seafloor mapping scientist, who has also collaborated in the past with HMRG, and can assure you that according to the measurements of the seafloor mapping community, Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench is still the deepest. I was involved in mapping Horizon Deep in the Tonga Trench and our measurment was 10,633 m +/- 27 m. By the way, that is millions of feet, not thousands (34,885,171). Our work is published in the peer-reviewed journal, Marine Geophysical Researches (http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/tonga/ ).

Steveha, I really enjoyed your analysis, especially as someone who was 21 when Tron came out and really loved it.I would have given Tron: Legacy a couple of more points on both story and heart (e.g., I agree w/ comments others made about abandonment issues). I was also seeing parallels to 2001: A Space Odyssey and War Games, but that's just me (e.g., Clu = Hall9000; Kevin Flynn's thinking = WOPR's discovery as in "The only way to win the game is not to play."). At any rate, you and other discussants might find Adam Roger's article in Wired to be of interest, if not seen already, especially the connections Rogers draws between those who made the original and those who made this sequel, http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/11/ff_tron/ . Bye now. Just saw Legacy tonight and am off to download that Daft Punk soundtrack!