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One Per Cent: A New Scientist Blog

What are the mysterious structures in the Gobi desert?

Paul Marks, senior technology correspondent


(Image: © Google -  © 2011 Cnes/Spot Images, DigitalGlobe, GeoEye)




Probably not. My money's on it being a target practice range for the People's Liberation Army.

Why? One of the other formations gives the game away: looking tantalisingly like Stonehenge from a great height, zooming in reveals three aircraft sitting at it's heart. Clearly, it is some kind of military target for airstrike or gunnery practice. Another 4 x 4 piece grid some 200 metres across has some pieces clearly blown to smithereens, again supporting the target practice theory, and a dummy runway in garish bluish-white is probably not for style-conscious aliens but air-to-ground strafing practice.

However, there is always the chance the Google maps have been hacked and that these "structures" are mere overlays, inserted through digital skulduggery and intended to keep conspiracy theorists happy for weeks. The 21st century version of crop circles, in other words.

Follow Paul Marks on Twitter: @paulmarks12

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there are two kinds of conspiracy theories-
real conspiracies
a vaster conspiracy than the conspracy against Clinton


If you look at it sideways you can see three pyramid strcutures and mountain ranges behine and around. It's, like a map indicating certain mountain ranges and where these pyramids reside.


At least two of those structures seams to be real objects (square pattern). They are nearby military bunker and look like vicarious calibration spot for satellite. The complex pattern however is highly suspect since the pattern pass over cliff without any distortion.


This is only the tip of the iceberg...

Investigate the area around this structure in a 50-100km radius.
There are gigantic perfect geometrical formations like a grids of bizarre shaped symmetrical roads covering a vast area of hundreds of square miles (plus at least another 4 strange artefacts...)! You will need to zoom out a bit.

The level of detail in the way these formations blend into the terrain makes it difficult to be an overlay, although I am guessing not impossible.

Many have noticed these lines before. I wonder if anyone has ever tried to visit to verify the existence of these formations. Apparently they are located at an area surrounded by deserts, far away from commercial airports and civilisation.


Isn't civilization (2nd para) spelled with a "z"?? Maybe that's why it's lost...


There are a few things which are pretty obvious.

1) It is not of tremendous strategic importance to China. Otherwise, they wouldn't let it be on Google Maps.

2) These are certainly not runways, considering the terrain is terrible.

3) Aliens or the ancients did not do any of this work, as you can find out through Google Earth's historical imagery of the area.

You can see that there are tracks of vehicles all over the place. They might have been used in creating this pattern, probably by carrying sand (limestone?) from nearby regions. Why? God knows why...

There are antenna towers and stuff too, if you go a little further from the strange pattern. And the same vehicle marks are found there too. And there are quite a few weird things around as well. There is even a greenhouse.

One more thing that puzzles me is that the area around coordinates 44.711336, 93.529494. Using Google Earth's historical imagery, it appears that these striped rectangles were formed between 2006 and 2009 and they appear to be on a very bad terrain.

I really doubt that Google has been hacked for a Gobi joke though.


As for the structure at 40.404534,93.636861 which has antenna towers and some kind of grid, there was nothing there in 2003.
On April 13, 2005, there appear some vehicle tracks, possibly for site inspection.
On April 29, 2005, some construction work has been done there.
On September 27, 2006, it appears complete.



Maybe the author isn't from the USA. Get off your high horse.



Brilliant mate, just brilliant. :O)


Aidan and James,
Aluminium-aluminum must have two "i"s... why? Because you say so?
The IUPAC disagrees with you, but what do the professionals know?


OMG! If you look close enough at those military test facilities, um, I mean those alien landing sites...if you zoom in to 50 feet...OMG! I can see a whole group of 20' tall BLUE aliens...and, what's this, they're middle fingers are all flipping off Google's satellite!!! Incredible, I guess they like Chinese food! Yum!


The last picture listed at Gizmodo is a more recent addition to the original article. And it's a structure that has already gotten a lot of scrutiny: a 900 x 700 m scale model replica of Aksai Chin, territory that China seized from India in 1961. First discovered by Google Earth forum members (, it eventually spilled into the mainstream news. One Western journalist made a trip out there, but had his local chauffeur walk up to the gate, which turned turned out to be blocked by armed guards.


I mean THEIR not they're...I think one of those buggers possessed me!!! Where's my government compensation!!!


Clearly military - look at the entrance to the region through a checkpoint at 40.485349,93.299677


Looks like the giant crystallization pattern on the surface of a lava lake to me. Sorry, no aliens required.


well ill tell u what those lines are, they were underground tunnels built by an ancient civilization. edgar cayce predicted this discovery 80 years ago, they will soon discover that there is a still working elevator somewhere on one of those sites.


All the structures are located near the home of the chinese nuclear weapon testing centre at Lop Nur, and the location of the first chinese H-bomb test. Incidentally, the structures similar to runways are almost exactly the same length as the main runway at Heathrow airport.

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