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Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

That is what I was looking at. i remember it now.

If you look very closely at those grids, they get even stranger. Note how they do not follow the contours of the land beneath them ? And they appear to have some kind of building or assembly every so often.

I wondered at first if they could be some kind of track, but they are too precise.

Also they assembly is big. I made it about 40 Km across.

I'll have to get access to Google Earth again and go back and look. \this feature is the reason I was trying to get World Wind to work. Hoping the definition may be better.

One interesting thing to do is go as low as you can and follow the object North.
Yes, not following the land contours is most odd.
I did wonder if it was either of the following:
  • A gigantic antenna array for astronomical purposes.
  • A preliminary layout for a huge new city.
  • A preliminary irrigation system for reclaiming land from the desert.
  • Something of military purpose.
  • Testing of autonomous vehicles.
 
I couldn't find an object there, but there are some huge grids (roads or irrigation channels?) in that area. Very odd.

Yeah, on Google Maps (satellite view) they appear to be tracks made by 4+ wheeled vehicles (or really big segways...) making a grid with squares roughly 200m by 200m (using the G-Maps 'measure distance tool' by eye, so far from a definitive measure) which extend over rather a large area.

About 1km left of the spot in those co-ords is a linear feature that seems to run almost diagonally through some of the grided area, comprised of white-ish 'features' about 40m apart, and with parallel vehicle tracks either side, and sometimes crossing it, and sometimes circling the light coloured 'features'.

As far as I can trace it, this linear feature is roughly 4km long!

Most Curious.

Edit: Ah, ninja'd in the meantime!

Edit the second: The parallel tracks vary between 2-2.5m wide mid point to mid point, so I'm sticking with some kind of terestrial vehicle, even though the grid is weirdly 'flat', whilst tracks across and between the grid lines appear to undulate with the terrain.

Curiouser and Curiouser.
 
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There are quite a few strange things in the general area once you start to look around.
I once followed a power line around 150 Mile just to see where it went.

It's a weird place.

Beard Sprite,

The thing that rules out tracks for me is the way they don't follow the contours. It's a mountainous region.
 
One interesting thing to do is go as low as you can and follow the object North.
Nearby, there is what looks like a power station. Near that is a grid of what looks like ICBM silos.

Edit: Oh, not silos! Foundations for windmills. There's a huge wind farm being built.
 
There are quite a few strange things in the general area once you start to look around...

It's a weird place.

Sure is!


Beard Sprite,

The thing that rules out tracks for me is the way they don't follow the contours. It's a mountainous region.

I know what you mean, and they do appear to be on the northern slopes of a valley between two mountain ranges, but they still resemble nothing so much as vehicle tracks.

Especially when looking at the tracks that exist over, around and through the grid pattern.

Why anyone would go to that much trouble to make tracks like that look like a regular grid when viewed from above, well, they've got me there!

Obviously, I'm just another internet rando venturing an opinion, so I can't claim anything definitive!

Nearby, there is what looks like a power station. Near that is a grid of what looks like ICBM silos.

Edit: Oh, not silos! Foundations for windmills. There's a huge wind farm being built.

That seems like a solid idea for whats going on - and if it does turn out to be silo's, oh well, I'm on most of the watch lists out there already anyway, just for being a curious nerd!
 
That would seem to make sense. It's nine years since I saw the image. I'll have to go down to the library tomorrow and use their computers to take another look. There may be a newer image.

Are the foundations part of the grid ? Or adjacent to it?.

The grid looks too precise to be power lines, especially the curved ends.

I'll come back to this subject later. When I've had another look.

Damn ! looks as if I may need to get a new computer after all. I'll have to check in with NASA World Wind forum and see what the minimum spec is.

thanks for checking it out for me.

INT21.
 
Are the foundations part of the grid ? Or adjacent to it?.
Nearby, not part of the grid. Although the grid may be a marking-out phase before building a wind farm - the spacing looks similar.
 
Why would they build a huge generating facility so far away from towns and cities? There'd be a certain amount of power drop by the time the electricity got to a town.
 
...just for being a curious nerd! ..

Is there any other kind ?

:)


Heh, I should hope not, but when your interests run through ancient sites and technology, Cold War military history and anything weird enough to be considered Fortean, you can quickly end up with a rather, well, suspicious looking browser history without really meaning to!
 
Why would they build a huge generating facility so far away from towns and cities? There'd be a certain amount of power drop by the time the electricity got to a town.

True, but I suppose if they raise the voltage high enough then the current will go down and the losses won't be as bad.

Or maybe they need a lot of power (fairly) locally for some project.
 
They have mapped out wind farm potential across that region of China and built quite a few. Quite possible that is a grid of sensors for recording data across a wide area.

Why would they build a huge generating facility so far away from towns and cities? There'd be a certain amount of power drop by the time the electricity got to a town.

There's a few cities in the area - Hami, pop. 580 000, is about 250km away. A large wind farm would provide a lot of power for it and surrounding towns. Easier to construct/maintain/staff than a conventional power plant. Hami also has a molten salt solar plant nearby -

https://www.evwind.es/2019/12/30/xinjiangs-first-concentrated-solar-power-plant-operational/72831

Paper on the mapping :

http://academic.hep.com.cn/fesci/article/2018/2095-0195/2095-0195-12-2-264.shtml

Windy.jpg
 
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Tribble,

That's a lot of information, thanks for posting it.
 
Just been trying to get Google Earth onto my Linux machine.
According to My Documents it's there. But I can't work out how to open it.

I'll have to nip over to the Puppy forum and ask them.
 
Looks to me like the kind of pattern you would end up with if you were following the instructions of a systematic computerised search of an area guided by satnav (eg). there is a corridor of equally spaced tracks back and forward, overlapping, and at right angles to that, another corridor of equally spaced tracks back and forward, overlapping.
I would hazard a guess that the Chinese authorities have a pretty good idea of where to look for something, but aren't entirely certain, so have spent a considerable amount of time 'prospecting' in the area, which leads to a further question - What are they looking for somewhere so remote?
Oil? Gold? Ancient ruins? Crashed spacecraft? Crashed Aliens?

Are there any more recent pictures which show any earthworks within the area?
 
Trev',

You will have noticed there are 'things ' on the 'track' in places. What makes it unusual (one of the things) is the precise bends at the end of each. If they were simply turns in a track used by vehicles such precision would would not be needed.
 
Yes, not following the land contours is most odd.
I did wonder if it was either of the following:
  • A gigantic antenna array for astronomical purposes.
  • A preliminary layout for a huge new city.
  • A preliminary irrigation system for reclaiming land from the desert.
  • Something of military purpose.
  • Testing of autonomous vehicles.

I've just been looking at this grid thing on google earth.

Are we sure that it is an actual thing on the ground, and not just some artefact on the satellite image itself? I can't see how it can keep such a regular shape over the changing terrain.

As I zoom out I see that the grid takes on a sort of cross shape, i.e. one 'arm' of the grid comes down roughly NE-SW and another one crosses it at a perfect right-angle (and appears to be much longer than the other 'arm').

(Not sure if ok to post google earth images on here so I haven't).
 
I've just been looking at this grid thing on google earth.

Are we sure that it is an actual thing on the ground, and not just some artefact on the satellite image itself? I can't see how it can keep such a regular shape over the changing terrain.

As I zoom out I see that the grid takes on a sort of cross shape, i.e. one 'arm' of the grid comes down roughly NE-SW and another one crosses it at a perfect right-angle (and appears to be much longer than the other 'arm').

(Not sure if ok to post google earth images on here so I haven't).
You can post a Kmz link to Earth by setting a placemark to the site, then select the placemark on your list and choose save to your documents, then copy it here.
 
I've just been looking at this grid thing on google earth.

Are we sure that it is an actual thing on the ground, and not just some artefact on the satellite image itself? I can't see how it can keep such a regular shape over the changing terrain.

As I zoom out I see that the grid takes on a sort of cross shape, i.e. one 'arm' of the grid comes down roughly NE-SW and another one crosses it at a perfect right-angle (and appears to be much longer than the other 'arm').

(Not sure if ok to post google earth images on here so I haven't).

Zebra,

I'm fairly sure it isn't some artifact of the satellite camera. You can see where it interacts with the ground in places.

Does anyone here use NASA World Wind ?

INT21.
 
OK well if I'm looking at the same thing everyone else is, this is it (thumbnails so you should see them bigger if you click on them):

On this one you can just see the faint 'cross' shape where the two arms, as I said earlier, intersect:
1581790515929.png

Zoomed out the grid gets even fainter, but you can still make out both 'arms' including the long one that goes top-left to bottom-right, going all the way to the top of the screenshot here:
1581790786078.png

Closer view of the area top-left in the previous shot:
1581790878860.png

Perhaps I haven't looked closely enough yet but I haven't yet found the areas where it seems to interact with the landscape.

It just looks so.. uniform... against an otherwise non-uniform terrain.
 
The uniformity is the big mystery. But you need to get down much lower to see the detail.

I think I was down to about 300 Metre when I looked at it.

As I mentioned, I don't have access to Google Earth at the moment, so can't follow up.

Hoping to correct that soon.
 
We've never needed a baby monitor, but suffice to say that after reading those I wouldn't dream of recommending one to anybody else!
I guess some parents have monitors for their young-but-not-baby kids, and a local story recently covered a particularly awful case where a couple of young girls sharing a bedroom had a creep say to the kid's room, over a hacked monitor, something like "Hi. I'm Santa Clause, and I want to be your friend." Of course the parents reported it to the police and the media, so the local news played the parent's recording, and it just sounded like the worst of humanity.
 
Trev',

You will have noticed there are 'things ' on the 'track' in places. What makes it unusual (one of the things) is the precise bends at the end of each. If they were simply turns in a track used by vehicles such precision would would not be needed.

Indeed. I spent some considerable time (nothing better to do) looking at the closest resolution level and could see many instances of interaction in the area - obvious tracks of vehicles driving into and out of the existing tracks, marshalling points where many vehicles have made multiple movements, parts of the tracks where it looks as if something has been dragged along similar to ploughed furrows, areas where the tracks show repeated breaks in a regular pattern as though something has been lifted up and put down again.
However, I did not actually see any vehicles. The level of resolution does appear to be good enough that they would be able to be seen if there were any there.
The precise bends on the turn points could be explained by the possible fact that maybe that is due to the minimum achievable turn radius of the steering of the vehicle(s) or that the Chinese are just very accurate and precise.
I've also not seen any construction of any sort, no huts or buildings etc, but again, that might be because the level of resolution is not enough.
 
Trev,

Do you have the date for your image ? I suspect it will be the same as I saw.

Must go down to the library tomorrow and use their Google Earth.

I have downloaded GE onto my Linux machine. Just need to get it to work.
 
More of a beware of what you wish for really. Boring but makes me smile every time I have a bad day at work.

About 30 years ago I used to live in town A and work in a town B. Back then it was a 30 minute drive in total, I used to think that was a long time - the impatience of youth. I used to drive through town C to get there. On the way there was a Business park that was about 10 mins from my house. I used to drive past and think how cool it would be work there. Just 10 minutes!!! Fast forward 30 years and I have lived around the country, but guess where I now work! Only I live 50 minutes in the opposite direction . Life likes to play it's little games.
 
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