China Building network in middle of desert

[DaveC426913]

What are these?

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/11/china-gigantic/?mbid=ob_ppc_dangerroom

This must be a driving training ground. What's strange is the way the lines are cut. Some of the curves are highly acute, yet the points are carefully constructed, not all the way a bulldozer would render them - they look like drawing fat lines in CorelDraw with corners set to "sharp".

 

[Evo]

Heres the latest

http://news.discovery.com/earth/chinas-white-desert-lines-111117.html

 

[DaveC426913]

Well, don't know about solved, but it makes for a plausible theory.

 

[rootX]

Someone passed me a link few weeks ago

Few possibilities:
- Some failed military missions
- In progress military missions
- China's making some secret cultural sites like great wall of china
- Google is having fun
-

I doubt anyone would ever learn about their origin and purpose.

 

[256bits]

Looks like the detour map during construction season where I live.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Weird.

If you go to the article in Dave's post, and from there to google maps, and then zoom in as far as possible, the scale tells you that one of these lines is approximately 60 to 70 feet wide.

That's a freakin' lot of paint or chalk.

The satellite calibration idea sort of makes sense, except it seems more likely there would be some structure already in place somewhere they could use for that.

 

[Bobbywhy]

Look 20 km due West for more, then another 10 km West of that for more strange shapes!

 

[zoobyshoe]

Look 20 km due West for more, then another 10 km West of that for more strange shapes!

Yes, when you zoom in there seems to be all sorts of man made stuff.

 

[hellervdc]

I read somewhere that these are to calibrate their satellites.

 

[DaveC426913]

I read somewhere that these are to calibrate their satellites.

That was apparently the story NASA has been postulating. They're not sure either.

Best hypothesis I've seen so far is that it is a testing ground for some sort of vehicles - like unmanned tanks. Here's why:

The "roads" are at crazy angles, as if to test maneuvering - yet they are extremely carefully crafted at those crazy angles - note the pointiness of some of the more acute angles. Good examples at top center.

There's no reason to make acute angles have long points (it would be far more expedient to round then off) unless you really needed all parts of the road to be perfectly straight lines.

If you had vehicles that used edge recognition for navigation, you'd want well-defined edges for it to detect, but you'd want to challenge its ability to move up and down roads by making them at random angles.

 

[geo101]

If you look closely some of the lines overlie topography, so I would describe them as roads per se, more like tracks.

Also, if you look closely you can see what appears to be vehicle tracks following and cross-cutting the lines. Some of these will be due to the workers creating the lines, but it lends some support vehicle maneuvering tests.

Why so wide? Well, I've seen how people drive cars in China, so I'd hate to think how they would drive a tank!