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China Building Gigantic Structures In the Desert

Posted by timothy on from the what's-your-best-guess? dept.

vbraga 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."

8 of 412 comments (clear)

  1. Re:These areas are for military by FrankSchwab · · Score: 5, Informative

    Because all of his links go to ads?

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    And the worms ate into his brain.
  2. Possibly Salt Evaporation by cobrausn · · Score: 5, Informative

    Some folks on hackernews have suggested it could be a massive salt or mineral collection operation. Not sure myself, but here is the comparison shots.

    One in Israel

    California

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    How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
    1. Re:Possibly Salt Evaporation by Guppy · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not sure... but wouldn't it require not being in the desert for there to be water to evapourate to form the lines?

      Not necessarily. Chinese have been producing salt from underground brine deposits for millenia. They even invented the Percussive Drilling Rig for this purpose, reaching depths that the rest of the world would not match until modern times.

  3. Re:These areas are for military by keytoe · · Score: 4, Informative

    Worse, his links go to an advertisement based link shortener that won't let you see the content until you sign up. Riiiiight.

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    Culture is more than commerce

  4. Re:These areas are for military by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not to mention it's completely ripped off from a reddit post here:
    http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/mat1s/there_appears_to_be_a_monumental_militaryscience/

  5. Re:Possible use... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Fractal antennas are implemented in cell phones because they can be used to receive multiple frequencies with one antenna, but no radio wavelength would require an antenna that big. Good observation though.

  6. Re:Possible use... by lgw · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, from what I've read it's near a Chinese missile testing site, and it a couple o fthese do look like a fake city grid done up in a hurry to give surface-to-surface missiles something to shoot at.

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    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  7. Re:Are they simulating a city? roads? Testing opti by bughunter · · Score: 3, Informative

    You're getting close. Hard to say for certain, though, whether they're targets for aerial or orbital sensors. Having worked on similar optical, IR and Radar ISR sensors, these look very familiar to the calibration targets and test ranges we used with those systems. Can't say much more, other than that for scientific sensors used to monitor atmospheric chemistry, we often used very large, flat areas with albedos as white and as spectrally pure as possible... think very large areas of uniform minerals like dry lake beds. On top of those were placed small point targets, and once we even had access to MTF targets built on the ground.

    I'm guessing the third one is for radar -- synthetic aperture radar perhaps.

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    I can see the fnords!