Sneaky sneaky.

I see a stick figure of Jesus in the lower right corner

It's obvious what the designs are for once you understand their purpose, as the article states, but that won't stop the tin foil hat crowd from making up zany stories. It's like we can't accept that China does what we do. We seem to think all they do is kung fu, kill their own citizens, and give us all those tasty dishes at chinese restaurants. They spy because it'd be irresponsible of them not to do so and these are just tools of the trade.

Why don't these nosy people look for odd photos of the USA and other countries? All major military powers have to have these type of operations or they would not be able to keep their equipment up-to date or accurate. Too many people have too much time on their hands and fill their time trying to find something evil or develop a conspiracy theory.

Find something productive to do and leave Science Fiction to the screenwriters!

Glad we figured this one out...

For a moment I was afraid that Chinese teens had figured out how to toilet paper entire sections of landscapes, while US teens can only manage suburban yards. Whew!

Surface mining and they are resricted to spacific areas if you zoom in you can see truck tire tracks. The round one is another story.

Everything has a logical explanation easily understood by those with normal intelligence and good sense.

One of them looks like a chinese checkers board

like crop circles, comes from the same place for the same reasons: hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha - that is kind of funny...

still waiting on the zombie apokolypse

These "new found" Google Maps images (at least the second one) may be newly found, but a quick chek on Google Earth's Historical Imagery section shows that they existed in photos taken in 2005. And whne you look at those oler photos, the lines ARE filled in, with no gaps.

MY god...do these "experts" not know about Goiogle EARTH rather htan maps?

During the invasion of Iraq, I remember reading a number of blogs commenting on the odd features dotting all the air fields around Baghdad. They were bomb craters was the general concensus. I took a look at the images and could immediately tell they were piles of sand. I have interpreted aerial photos and satallite images for most of my 30 year career. It is an art as much as a science. Ever seen a golf course on a vertical image? How about a drive in theater? Looking at things from overhead make them look like something you would never expect. You need to use shadow, pattern, texture, and shape. Knowing what time the image was taken, and the sun angle helps too, but you can usually determine that approximately by looking. In the case of the airfields, it was apparent to me by the shadows cast by the buildings that the shadows of the objects were on the wrong side if they were holes or depressions. They were throwing an shadow in the same direction as the adjacent buildings so it was easy to deduce that they were positive in relief, and hence piles instead of holes. I was right as subsequent pictures on the ground showed. Saddam had piles of sand placed on the runways to prevent US aircraft from landing.

In the case of the round shaped feature, a closeup would show that the objects were radar reflectors oriented in a circular pattern around the aircraft in the center. These reflectors would disperse the radar signature radially outward away from the target. When I was in college we found we could map most of the chicken barns (long metal roofed buildings) on the Eastern Shore of Virginia using radar, a side benefit(?) of using radar images to map various geologic features in the area.

My first guess of the road pattern was a storage area for munitions. Walker Lake in Nevada has a plethora of bomb bunkers scattered over the desert connected by roads in a similar disaray. Since the storage bunkers are positioned according to topography, the pattern is irregular. I did not look at the closeup of the pattern in China so I cannot say if there is any evidence of bunker entrances. I do not think it is surface mining as there is no evidence of excavations either.

what really intrigues me is how each location seems to have a big 'A' marker... almost reminiscent of Goggle Earth pins... (hehe) ;)

I looked at the geometric pattern and it looks like the design was either pained on the desert or is a fabric. Itis probably paint. The areas someone says are tire marks is actually sediment transported over areas of the design by water as those areas follow the pattern of intermittent streams. In one area the pattern is ovelain on the side of a large boulder, almost a hill. Looking at the big picture of the area it is highly bisected by fractures, this area looks to have been artificially smoothed and is set partially on the slope of a sedimentary pediment. It is most definitely used to rectify satellite images. That is, once the image is obtained, they can see how much distortion the instrument has induced by comparing the imaged pattern with the actual one, something that is important to do if your images are to be used for anything but pretty pictures on your wall.

To the west of this site are even more features, some look very much like airstrips, but are overlain by sediment from streams. So whatever they were used for, they were made some time ago and are probably no longer in use.

Chariots of the gods, man. They're fallin' out of the sky like flies...

taught the Incas everything they knew...

(The Thing)

Worst Chinese I ever ate was in China. Dont trust the Chinese government. Terrier based DimSum is bad news.

Our "crop circles" , are so much nicer..!!!

The aliens are using the Chinese military as a camouflage....They are actually looking for Margena Myrick...the Alien Harvest of human intelligence is coming soon...best thing to do is play real dumb; that way they won't take you!!!

Its kinda crazy because the first picture at 40.452107,93.742118 is exactly 1 nautical mile long running north to south.

Just some velly bored chinese!!!

You gotta check out the images being found on Google Earth @ www.searthing.com. Some of these are really obscure and really incredible. Most of them never seen before.

Uuuuhhhhhh,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,WHO CARES?

Well, just look at the round on. Obviously that is where they are keeping the Titan for when the Dregde attack and destroy the Earth. =D Otherwise, I don't much care.

Man, I'm so glad to read this, I haven't been able to sleep for weeks worrying about what they were for.

After years of study in encryption and counter-intelligence, I have been able to decode the message; It says:

Shop at Walmart !