China Building Gigantic Structures In the Desert 412
A user writes "New photos have appeared in Google Maps showing unidentified titanic structures in the middle of the Chinese desert. The first one is an intricate network of what appears to be huge metallic stripes. It's located in Dunhuang, Jiuquan, Gansu, north of the Shule River, which crosses the Tibetan Plateau to the west into the Kumtag Desert. It covers an area approximately one mile long by more than 3,000 feet wide. The tracks are perfectly executed, and they seem to be designed to be seen from orbit."
Possible use... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Possible use... (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't look like metal - you can see vehicle tracks and small bits of hills / dirt piles in the middle. What's really interesting is the lack of 'infrastructure' around it. I don't even see an obvious road in to the area. No buildings on a cursory scan. A few round crater-like areas.
I think it just spells "Welcome Alien Overlords" in Mandarin or something.
Some to do with mountain cuts / water damning? (Score:4, Interesting)
Some to do with mountain cuts / water damning?
Re:These areas are for military (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Possible use... (Score:5, Interesting)
This one (the first image in the Wired article) seems to be exactly the same dimensions as the image tiles - zoom out until you see different "vintage" images and you'll see what I mean. Could just be an artifact. The others look real though.
This is a nice tool for viewing the cross section (altitude) of an arbitrary path drawn on a google map:
http://www.geocontext.org/publ/2010/04/profiler/en/ [geocontext.org]
Fun stuff in the China Desert (Score:5, Interesting)
More "QR Codes": 40.458638,93.390827
Bunkers near the wierd lines: 40.46294,93.372341
fake runways/bases: 40.472416,93.5079
Bomb (cluster?) hits on that base: 40.489307,93.500476
Fake houses/city that have been hit; 40.413766,93.583812
Some form of ULF or other low frequency communication array? 40.413766,93.583812
Some odd town: 40.108521,93.993434
Chemical or other plant that is using A LOT of water in the middle of the desert: 40.108521,93.993434
Re:More stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, the third one looks a lot like a city grid. In fact, it looks exactly like the roadmaps in Google Maps of a well-organized downtown, might be some connection there. The "targeting bullseye" might well be just that (calibration for high-altitude photography, seems like the likeliest, especially with the planes in the middle.) The first one is just weird.
Make-work actually seems quite possible for the rest. Certainly wouldn't be a first for China. Anything that keeps their economy expanding they will fund, so it seems far more likely than some sort of super-weapon.
The more I looked at it the more I figured it to be a mock-up of some roads. Someone pointed out a few of the outlines to the west look like aircraft cariers. I suspect if you can find where in the world these lines fit roads (my guess is in the vicinity of some nation's capitol city) you'll have an answer - target practice.
Pardon my french (Score:3, Interesting)
Wikimapia knows a lot (Score:5, Interesting)
http://wikimapia.org/#lat=40.4375406&lon=93.5410309&z=12&l=0&m=b/ [wikimapia.org]
It says "Test target".
Re:Possible use... (Score:4, Interesting)
Doesn't look like metal - you can see vehicle tracks and small bits of hills / dirt piles in the middle. What's really interesting is the lack of 'infrastructure' around it. I don't even see an obvious road in to the area. No buildings on a cursory scan. A few round crater-like areas.
I think it just spells "Welcome Alien Overlords" in Mandarin or something.
Looks like paint. There's a lot of uneven ground in there, which they haven't appeared to even fill.
Actual analysis (Score:5, Interesting)
So we have four images of Weird Stuff. I'm pretty sure I can get at least some information on the nature of two of them, if not the purpose.
First we have the Crazy Wide White Lines. If you look closely you see bits where the brown dirt intrudes on them, but it isn't clear whether the brown has been washed over them or the white has been washed away. However, here: http://tinyurl.com/6udmvce
you clearly see new gullies being formed, and taking the white stuff with it. So the white isn't a solid material; it's some kind of powder or paint, or maybe sand? Probably paint, as it hasn't been blown around by the wind; all the edges are very sharp except where gullies have cut over them. As for purpose, I don't know. Calibrating an orbital imaging system is quite possible; the material looks VERY reflective, which is exactly what you want to test your camera.
Then we have the Weird Grid Pattern, http://tinyurl.com/6s9vh7u . This is easy. Zoom in close. Reeeeal close. Oh look, it's tire tracks. This may be some kind of test for a new vehicle or navigation system, or just a prospecting operation or some other survey.
Then we have the Brown Squares And Blowed Up Trucks, http://tinyurl.com/86tx2e5 . The trucks are pretty obviously blown up, or at least derelict and strewn about. Dunno what the brown squares are, but they're flat on the ground, not raised or recessed; no shadows. And there's this square grid of markers as well, and a white splash mark in the middle. So I have no idea what it IS, but it LOOKS somewhat like an artillery target or something.
Then we have This Thing, http://tinyurl.com/ckxrbvr . And I'll say it, I'm stumped. It looks like three airplanes with Super Stonehenge around it. The airplanes have a wingspan of about 40 feet assuming the scale bar is correct, and each structure is something like 10-25 feet long and only a few wide. There's something like 8 taller towers scattered around the center, near the planes. The planes have long swept-back wings that certainly don't look like modern fighters or high-speed aircraft. A B-52 has a wingspan of 185 feet and an F-16 has a wingspan of 32 feet, so it's something closer to the smaller size scale. They all appear to be the same type of plane. Maybe China has decided to set up their own Burning Man?
Also, oh hey, look at this: http://tinyurl.com/7vdaccb Remind you of anything, albeit older and more beat up? It's just a bit north-east of Super Stonehenge, and if you keep going north-east you find a couple airstrips and mostly-run-down-looking buildings. Interesting, no?
Re:Pieces of tape? (Score:5, Interesting)
Some of the features are overlaid by terrain. They're real. A friend sent me another link that included these and several more. Sorry, I don't have it to share.
One of the features on the other link was an airport. The runway and taxiway were bordered by the same white lines. They also had another airport right beside (but aligned differently) was newer. There were no actual paved runways, just the white lines representing where it should be.
The lines would be easily put down by a spray truck.
If you zoom in with Google Maps on the first image, you can see where dirt has washed across the lines to some degree in places. You'll also see the paint washed away from the lines.
There are plenty of vehicle tracks around the lines.
All in all, it looks like some economical setups for military exercises. It's a lot cheaper to set up a tent city with painted lines representing roads and runways, than to build a a practice city.
Some of the buildings look like they were blown up. Air strikes, or done by ground troops, who knows. Either one is a possibility.
For the most part, they look like they haven't been used in a while. And singe Google Maps images are delayed by years, we're looking at old training areas, that were old 5 years ago.
Re:Possible use... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.trinity.edu/jdunn/spiderdrugs.htm [trinity.edu]
Re:Possible use... (Score:5, Interesting)
More likely, though, is that these patterns are being used to calibrate satellites. A nice, easy to spot image in the middle of a sparsely populated desert? I would not be surprised if the US also had a few of these things lying around.
Google Earth helps (Score:5, Interesting)
Lots more good information available via Google Earth than via Google Maps. In particular, check out "historical imagery".
2003: Bare patch of desert
April 14, 2005: Lines are being constructed
May 30, 2005: Construction complete
No change since then, most recent images Nov 2010.
So while TFA says China is "building" these, really they built them 6 years ago. And they can't be "structures" either: there's no way a dozen trucks (see below) can construct 2 square km of anything substantial in two months.
The "under construction" image in April 2005 is most interesting. There's a depot on the west side with a dozen or so trucks, and what looks like a stockpile of messy white powder. If you look at the leading edges of the lines under construction, you can see what looks like dumped piles of white powder, and in some places white stuff has washed into a gully and been carried downstream.
One poster here [slashdot.org] said that "Those structures occupy some pretty treacherous hilly terrain, yet look perfectly straight from above", so it must be meant to be viewed from orbit. This is not the case: the land is a flat desert plain, with bumps a few meters high, sloping gradually 50 m downhill over 2 km.
My interpretation: bombing target, made of lime or some other white powder, spread over the ground to make complicated road patterns. Designed for practicing aerial bombing or artillery in an urban street map.
Re:These areas are for military (Score:5, Interesting)
It *seems* quite informative and on topic... But someone actually familiar with military hardware would have written SPY-1, not "Spy I". On top of which, the SPY-1 is a radar and only a part of the Aegis system - another mistake someone familiar with the military would not make.
Whoever was posting to reddit (linked elsethread) that this spammer copied from is just as bad. He *sounds* reasonable to the uninformed, but his posts are riddled with subtle errors And not the kind that indicate someone talking about classified stuff hiding his true knowledge. The kind that indicate someone who gets his knowledge of military matters from the Discovery Channel and conspiracy nutter message boards.
So, the CIA/NSA/ABCDEFG is crowdsourcing slashdot? (Score:4, Interesting)
What i would do.
Re:Possible use... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think they look like something that has been photoshopped into the pictures. You can see the structure of the surface under them - if they had been real, the ground would have been leveled, or they would not have looked so perfectly straight when seen from a slight angle as in the pictures.
Perhaps they are some of the little flaws that mapmakers put into their maps and photos as a sort of "watermark" so they can prove in court that you have made an illegal copy?
Strange Things Are Familiar (Score:4, Interesting)
Here in Utah, where the government seems to own most of the state, we have our own share of odd structures. Like these on the Dugway Proving Grounds:
http://g.co/maps/9uz4u [g.co]
http://g.co/maps/yyyfk [g.co]
http://g.co/maps/zs7c3 [g.co]
http://g.co/maps/vh7mf [g.co]
http://g.co/maps/q2zg5 [g.co]
There are a gazillion odd things on the landscape of Earth. It seems most of them are either built by scientists, the military, or both.
My personal guess for the China structures is that it is something really boring. Like a geological study using satellites. Some of the structures do seem to be military/bombing related. However, I have to wonder if the squiggly line structures are related to a satellite based geological study. If you look close, it rather seems like some of the lines have been "moved" or are folded on itself by some natural process. Doesn't that seem like a lot of disruption in the soil for being less than a decade old? If I were a geologist, that might be just the kind of area I might want to research. Doubly so if I was trying to protect the many important archaeological artifacts found in that area of China. I might even try some anti-erosion studies, etc. Even more meaningful would be understanding how important those archaeological sites are to the economy. If they wash away, will tourists still pay to see a small mound of dirt?
Yeah, I know it isn't as exciting as space aliens... which I would much prefer to be true. ;-)