Giant Structures in the Chinese Desert

I saw this in the news yesterday.
I was hoping there'd be an A2K conspiracy thread in response.
I knew we could count on you, edgar!

These are the newest Wal Marts soon to open in China.

Damn.
I was hoping for something more sinister, farmer!

I am not being alarmist. I was curious enough to see what others thought about it.

Oh I know you're not, edgar.
I was being silly.
Sorry.

Oh, I know you are not condemning me. But I know how some people around here jump on a casual remark to start up a war.

The blues may be a salt pan opration.(Although these things usually generate pans of different colors as the bacteria colonies change at different concentrations.
Its obviously water but I have no idea why .

The circular one could be an irrigated field, (we can see our 160 actes sections with center pivot irrigation from space.
Im stickin with the Wal Mart for the squares, either that or some kind of Chinese facilities or dwelling areas.

Yesterday I zoomed further & further in on this image on a local news site.


The original formation that sparked all the speculation. It can be found on Google Map

... & I have to say I'm none the wiser about what the heck such a formation could possibly be, in a location like this.
Very strange.

How do we know they are not artifacts of the camera or hoaxes of some kind?

I haven't had the time to look extremely closely yet, but some of those images look too precise to be laid out on uneven terrain. The "grid" for example seems perfect, but it seems to be laid over hills and mountains. In order for anything like that to appear perfect in a three dimensional environment, it would have to be viewed from above at a single location, and it would probably have to be laid out from the same vantage point.

I haven't looked at them in enough detail yet so maybe I'm missing something, but they seem "fishy" just from cursory appearance.

How reputable are the sources providing the images?

Can we look these things up on Google Earth ourselves in realtime? What are the ground coordinates for these things?

I did try to find this story on snopes, but it wasn't there, yeterday.

Saw this on Gizmodo a few days ago, What the hell, China?, where the speculation from the commenters included everything from crop circles to a time machine (lol).

My favorite out of the bunch...

Lots of good conspiracy stuff there.

Some of the images appear to be actual structures, agricultural or otherwise. Other images appear to be camera effects of double-exposures or some other type of image corruption. And I think the report from the "ex-CIA" guy about satellites being concentrated on those areas is just an attempt by someone to fan the flames of suspicion for the sake of media attention.

http://news.yahoo.com/mysterious-symbols-china-desert-spy-satellite-targets-expert-132005935.html

Mysterious Symbols in China Desert Are Spy Satellite Targets, Expert Says

Sounds as good as anything I have read so far.

For the sake of selling a book, i'd surmise.

There are plenty of things that we have in this country that give the same expressions from space. China can do whatever it wants with its country as long as they dont **** up my view of Russia. Some of the big rectangular features can be seen to have larger cleared areas around the "lattice roads".

Maybe someone can load the copper King mine out in Bisbee AZ. from space. It kinda looks like a hole to hell.
Also, some of the hopewell Indian designs in Ohio look neat from the air. (Newark Ohio has the big one)

Funny gunga hasnt checked in on this one.

He's probably still trying to work out the anti-evolution angle . . .

Why would they need to go to all the trouble to paint a giant target on the ground when they could simply pick a known ground object or objects and calibrate from that?

I'm not sure I buy the "Satellite Targets" explanation yet.

Some of the images are simply ground objects which can be identified. I don't even know why they are included in the list of "mysterious" shapes. But others, like the zaggy lines in the rectangle, or the large grid, don't seem to be normal agricultural or industrial structures. Those are more curious to me.