One of the runways has several craters on the end. Since in an air-war you want to blow up an enemies runways so they can’t launch their planes, it seems possible the runways are “dummies” meant for bombing practice or testing as well.
If it is a bombing range, I’m not sure it’s so sensitive. After all, the CIA can probably figure out that the Chinese test their bombs somewhere without needing ariel pics. You can get high-res pics of nellis AFB bombing range in the US as well. Apparently craters don’t have very high intelligence value.
It’s also visible and more zoomable in google earth. there is a second, more decayed looking similar feature to the west of it and two landing-strip like features between the two
I checked out the whole area in Google Earth, and it throws off a very creepy vibe - these lines are definitely not superimposed. If you enable the “Digital Globe” layer you can see that according to Digital Globe’s archives, these lines have been there at least since May 2005, but were only partially visible in April of 2005, and were not at all visible in February of that year. The Digital Globe images are small, but clear enough to show that clearly this feature appeared in the first half of '05.
Maybe it’s an archeological dig of some kind? I did see that around 10-15 miles to the southeast, there are some archeological sites with photos posted.
This still does not explain the creepy blue buildings though.
I thought about the archeology too, after seeing the “ruins of Hecang City” pics on Google Maps. However, there aren’t any similar types of lines or runways near the photos of Hecang City or the photos of the western end of the Great Wall, which you’d think would be the most fertile area for archeology. It also appears that there are popular rock features about 10 miles to the west of this site, too, with lots of pics in Panoramio. The whole area looks really cool (like the desert scenes in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). I wonder how tight the security is up there.
Oooh, oooh, oooh - I forgot that Google Earth has a “historical imagery” feature that lets you view earlier images. And I caughtthem in the act!
Imagery from April 15th 2005 shows them in the middle of construction - oddly enough, it looks like they’ve either laid down chalk or possibly concrete, and that it has lasted pretty much intact for 4 years in a presumably harsh environment - very odd.
My wife an I were just discussing this as I pulled the screen grabs - it looks like the final product has some lines that seem to flow with the terrain, like most of those starting at the north of the image, and some lines that seem completely arbitrary, like those on the middle of the west side.
Putting my tinfoil hat on, I surmised that maybe the arbitrary lines are actually coded hanzi characters that become apparent when the other, terrain-restricted lines are accounted for. Or maybe I’m just going batshit since it’s late and I’m tired.
Either way, I feel like an uber-CIA analyst right now. This is so fun - I think I have a new addiction to replace Battlefield 1943.
Yes, I totally wish this was my full-time job. The idea about the characters is interesting, though I wonder what could be worth the expense and hassle to write? John 3:16? Ha!
For what it’s worth, there is a dam to the south of the site that has characters visible from Google Maps on it, though I’m guessing it translates as something boring like “Peking Hydroelectric Concern, Ltd.”
That’s odd - last night they were coming up fine for me. But Hypnagogic is right - now you have to hit refresh to get the image to show up.
I linked directly to them from my picasaweb account which doesn’t expose the rest of my picasa albums - I could have just put them in a public album, but I don’t want want the Chinese to have ready access to pictures of my house and family.
