# What are these things in China's desert **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 15, 2011, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995 "2011-11-15T08:33:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2011, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/21 "2011-11-15T21:11:09Z")
> [@](#): > > The tracks are perfectly executed, and they seem to be designed to be seen from orbit. To be able to be seen from ordinary aircraft is one thing. To be seen from satellites adds a bit more that just drama. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2011, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/22 "2011-11-15T21:27:22Z")
> [@Duckster](#): > > To be able to be seen from ordinary aircraft is one thing. To be seen from satellites adds a bit more that just drama. Why? Satellites can spot a newspaper lying on the ground these days. I’ve never heard of one that could read the print, but I’m sure it’s not far off. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2011, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/23 "2011-11-15T21:33:49Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > Why? Satellites can spot a newspaper lying on the ground these days. I’ve never heard of one that could read the print, but I’m sure it’s not far off. Not unless it’s very big print. Such a thing would be optically impossible (there have been several SDMB threads about it). ---
**Author:** ![Asympotically\_fat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47c2d/32.png) [@Asympotically\_fat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asympotically_fat)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2011, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/24 "2011-11-15T21:48:16Z")
If you go in to maximum zoom, I’m pretty sure it’s white paint or simalir markings. at 40.450858,93.739581 you can see how the paint follows the contour of the hill. A little to the left there’s a wormlike structure sticking out of the ground. Mongolian Death worm? ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2011, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/25 "2011-11-15T23:33:56Z")
> [@](#): > > I don’t get it. It’s got to be some kind of joke I’m not getting. The first picture is obviously sunlight reflecting off ice or water in the erosion ditches. > [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > Is it just a coincidence that the ditches are limited to a rectangular area? It seems to be an artefact of the photography. The images are taken in rectangular sections. Adjacent rectangles may be photographed at different times of day, under different weather, different light conditions, etc, and thus can appear to be totally different colours. ---
**Author:** ![Spezza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a698b9/32.png) [@Spezza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spezza)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/26 "2011-11-16T01:28:25Z")
Missile testing, at least the grid ones. For sophisticated guide missiles, the grid patterns resemble a city layout and can be used to testing. The one with concentric circle looks very much like the solar plant built in [Spain](http://inhabitat.com/sevilles-solar-power-tower/). ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/27 "2011-11-16T03:42:28Z")
[This one](http://maps.google.com/maps?t=w&hl=en-GB&ie=UTF8&ll=40.458007,93.390395&spn=0.047086,0.077162&z=14&vpsrc=0) seems to have had a mudflow or something like that over it. And see the light colored rectangle to the west of the ‘grid’? According to the Google Earth time slider, that was created sometime between May and November 2005. Incidentally, can anyone tell me how to copy coordinates of what you are looking at out of Google Earth? I can’t seem to figure it out. ---
**Author:** ![JpnDude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/838e76/32.png) [@JpnDude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JpnDude)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/28 "2011-11-16T04:18:23Z")
Perhaps they’re just fucking with Google Maps and their millions of users. Or they could be expansive movie sets. Hehehe. ---
**Author:** ![Crown\_Prince\_of\_Irony](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ed655f/32.png) [@Crown\_Prince\_of\_Irony](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crown_Prince_of_Irony)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/29 "2011-11-16T07:23:13Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > It seems to be an artefact of the photography. The images are taken in rectangular sections. Adjacent rectangles may be photographed at different times of day, under different weather, different light conditions, etc, and thus can appear to be totally different colours. Nope - if this were a one-off sat image, maybe, but if you bring up those coordinates in Google Earth (40.452107,93.742118), and use their “time machine” function, you can see that the pattern stays within the same dimensions, and with the same markings (accounting for weathering) over several years. Here’s a shot from April 2005 showing this mid-construction: [http://imm.io/bEBW](http://imm.io/bEBW). ETA: Here’s the same spot from Nov 2010: [http://imm.io/bECd](http://imm.io/bECd). ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/30 "2011-11-16T07:41:28Z")
I just saw them on Google Maps and they look really surreal and out of place. A bit like the Bifrost. If they’re for classified purposes, China wouldn’t let Google be taking pictures of them, would they? They’re not even taking any measures to conceal them. ---
**Author:** ![BACI](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ce73a5/32.png) [@BACI](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BACI)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/31 "2011-11-16T07:45:01Z")
This is an interesting view Crown Prince - the feint lines, whilst possibly tracks from vehicles used in the construction, remind me of cabling going back to whatever structure is there on the left. I would have thought that if they were vehicle tracks, there would be more of them and that they would be more irregularly distributed. Odd. ---
**Author:** ![Crown\_Prince\_of\_Irony](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ed655f/32.png) [@Crown\_Prince\_of\_Irony](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crown_Prince_of_Irony)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/32 "2011-11-16T07:59:43Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Incidentally, can anyone tell me how to copy coordinates of what you are looking at out of Google Earth? I can’t seem to figure it out. There may be a more elegant way to do it, but here’s my method - in Google Earth, I click the “Add Placemark” push-pin icon in the toolbar. Drag the pushpin to the spot you want coordinates for, then copy/paste the Latitude and Longtitude from the placemark properties window. If you’re plugging them back into another mapping tool, separate them with a comma. ---
**Author:** ![Crown\_Prince\_of\_Irony](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ed655f/32.png) [@Crown\_Prince\_of\_Irony](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crown_Prince_of_Irony)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/33 "2011-11-16T08:01:39Z")
> [@BACI](#): > > This is an interesting view Crown Prince - the feint lines, whilst possibly tracks from vehicles used in the construction, remind me of cabling going back to whatever structure is there on the left. I would have thought that if they were vehicle tracks, there would be more of them and that they would be more irregularly distributed. > > Odd. If you dig into this on Google Earth, you’ll see even more tracks on the southern edge of this area - some of which are still quite visible in the Nov 2010 shot, 5 years after they were made. While this is a desert and may not get a lot of rain, you’d think that wind erosion would have erased them by now. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/34 "2011-11-16T08:11:13Z")
> [@Darryl\_Lict](#): > > I dunno. There are actual bright cyan ponds due to potash mining evaporation ponds around Moab, Utah as can be seen in this photo: > > [http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Utah-Moab-Potash-Mining-4.jpg](http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Utah-Moab-Potash-Mining-4.jpg) > > I’ve seen them and they really are that color. Sure - I’ve seen flooded clay pits where the water was absurdly blue due to minerals (or possibly colloids), but a cyan runway is more likely to be an image adjustment artefact - they might have tweaked the tiles to normalise the earth tones and contrast, for example. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/35 "2011-11-16T08:18:49Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > Around both runways are what appear to be a few wadis. Running up and down the wadis are clusters of… things. They’re like horseshoe crabs buried under sand (unless my perspective is off and they’re actually craters). Many of them have tire tracks leading up to them. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of them. There’s also a cluster of them on the southern cross-piece of the cyan runway. I can’t check from here, but if their ‘tails’ are all pointing in a general downhill direction, then it sounds like they are probably craters, and the tails are eroded gullies leading out of them. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/36 "2011-11-16T12:14:00Z")
I tell you what’s even more spooky: the hilarious alteration between the Herald Sun’s article from Australia, and the one syndicated from News Corp Australian Papers by the Fox website: > [@Herald Sun](#): > > Officially, the same areas hosts similar circular arrangement suchas the one found in China. They’re missile test ranges to record weapon effects, one expert told the Telegraph. > > It’s enough to say seriously, China. Wtf? > [@Fox](#): > > Officially, the same areas hosts similar circular arrangement such as the one found in China. They’re missile test ranges to record weapon effects, one expert told the Telegraph. > > It’s enough to make one say, what the heck? ETA: note they ‘cleaned up’ WTF, but left all the typos in. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/37 "2011-11-16T13:02:59Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Sure - I’ve seen flooded clay pits where the water was absurdly blue due to minerals (or possibly colloids), but a cyan runway is more likely to be an image adjustment artefact - they might have tweaked the tiles to normalise the earth tones and contrast, for example. If they’re using an automatic adjustment, you’d expect the same effect to show up elsewhere, and if this was, for some odd reason, done by hand, it seems a bit strange that anyone would leave it like that. Plus there’s another ‘runway’ just a little to the west and with no photo edge lines in between, which appears a very deep shade of blue. It looks to me like it’s a reflective surface, reflecting sky. Same goes for the roofs of the buildings nearby- which are deep blue in that photo. ---
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/38 "2011-11-16T14:48:41Z")
> [@These are my own pants](#): > > If you go in to maximum zoom, I’m pretty sure it’s white paint or simalir markings. > > at 40.450858,93.739581 you can see how the paint follows the contour of the hill. A little to the left there’s a wormlike structure sticking out of the ground. Mongolian Death worm? You’re right. Once I zoomed in they do look like painted lines. Very strange. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/39 "2011-11-16T16:27:47Z")
More discussion [here](http://googlesightseeing.com/2009/08/chinese-military-weirdness) from 2009. If you click the thumbnails it takes you to the current imagery - note how some of them have been bombed out even more since the thumbnails were saved. Especially the “runway” and blue-roofed buildings (fifth and sixth thumbnails down the page). I don’t know why these pictures are suddenly all over the internet - they were being discussed as long ago as [2006](http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=469501&site_id=1#import)! ---
**Author:** ![Dufus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c77e96/32.png) [@Dufus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dufus)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995/40 "2011-11-16T16:38:53Z")
Just thought I’d mention the ghost cities being built in China: > **[And Now Presenting: Amazing Satellite Images Of The Ghost Cities Of China](https://www.businessinsider.com/pictures-chinese-ghost-cities-2010-12)** [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-these-things-in-chinas-desert/602995.md?page=3)