Satellites in the sky snap low-resolution photos from tens of thousands of miles above Earth, to satellites closer to Earth that capture higher-resolution shots, and even aerial photos taken from airplanes, kites, drones and even balloons. Archaeologists have taken advantage of the imagery that is available to anyone who downloads the software.
There is a boneyard of military planes, a polka-dot pattern created by ants, and a phantom island in the South Pacific, just some of the wacky places that can be seen on the internet. Some of the strangest are shown here.
There is a swastika.
There is a swastika-shapedgeoglyph in the sky. The image is courtesy of Google Earth.
This swastika-shaped design is one of more than 50 geoglyphs discovered in northern Kazakhstan. The swastika symbol was created from timber, but many of the geoglyphs were made of mounds. Theglyphs seem to have been there for 2,000 years. swastikas were not uncommon in Europe and Asia at the time, but they were not associated with any political beliefs.
There is an island in a lake.
An island in a lake.
This image is an eye-full and a mouthful, as it is an island-in-a-lake-on-an-island. This is a picture of a tiny island in a crater lake on an island called Volcano Island in a lake called Taal lake on the Philippine island of Luzon. For a long time, this phenomenon was thought to be the largest of its kind. It turns out that accolade goes to a 4-acre spit of land in northern Canada where no one has stepped foot.
There are some good videos for you.
Weird wheels.
The wheel structures in the Azraq Oasis are in Jordan. The image is courtesy of Google Earth.
Some of the wheel-shaped structures that may date back 8,500 years are on the surface of the planet. The spoked designs that dot Jordan's Azraq Oasis seem to be positioned in a way that coincides with sunrise on the winter solstice. A team of scientists with the Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East (APAAME) have been looking at wheel structures with satellite imagery available through the internet. The researchers have found that the wheels are different in their design, with some showing spokes that are not circular, others with just one or two bars, and still others not circular at all.
The wheels in this image are in the Azraq Oasis and may be aligned with the winter sunrise.
Bull's eye.
There are some "wheels" in Saudi Arabia that have bull's-eye designs. The image is courtesy of Google Earth.
The Middle East has a type of wheel that looks like a bull's-eye, with three triangles pointing toward the eye and small piles of stones leading from the triangles toward the bull's-eye wheel. David Kennedy, of the University of Western Australia, who co-directs the project, calls it a central bull's-eye tomb with three triangles each with at least a part of a connecting line of stone heaps running to the center.
A pyramid?
Is it natural or man-made? The image was taken via the Anomalies of the Earth.
Some people think that this image shows a pyramid. There is a debate as to whether the anomalies in Egypt are natural features or artificial structures. The security and economic situation in Egypt has limited the number and size of excavations.
Is that the Egyptian pyramids?
Is there aroded Egyptian pyramids or geologic features? The image was taken via the Anomalies of the Earth.
Is there aroded Egyptian pyramids or geologic features?
The island is called Phantom Island.
The "Sandy Island" is shown in the image above.
An island the size of Manhattan was discovered by a group of Australian researchers. Sandy Island was found on maps northwest of New Caledonia. It was shown as a black polygon on the internet. When scientists sailed there in November of 2012 they found open water.
The phantom landmass had been included on some maps for more than a century, and the researchers explained why in an obituary for the island published in April.
Puzzling a word.
The image is from the Maps section of the internet search engine.
There is a large pentagram, which is roughly 1,200 feet in diameter, etched into Earth's surface on the wind-blown steppes of central Asia. The five-pointed star surrounded by a circle can be seen on the online version of the more detailed version of the Earth.
The site was linked to devil worship by many online comments. The outline of a park made in the form of a star is marked by roads lined with trees, making the star shape even more distinct in aerial photos.
Launch sites that have been abandoned.
The Oahu Defense Area in Hawaii, which was equipped with missiles in open air with embankments between launch sites, was shown in a 1968 image. The image is from the Earth created by Google.
During the period from 1954 to the 1970s, Nike missiles sat ready to launch at nearly 300 sites across the United States. Some of those missiles had nuclear warheads. The advent of long-range missiles made those missiles obsolete.
David Tewksbury, a geographic information system specialist at Hamilton College in New York, hopes to preserve a visual record of the abandoned Nike missile launch sites before they disappear. His plan is to build a database so that anyone can find the Nike missile sites.
The Oahu Defense Area in Hawaii is shown in 1968. The site used to have missiles in the open air.
Desert Breath.
The desert-breath is on the ground.
A portal to another universe? Maybe it's an alien message? Is it a monument to a supernatural being? Desert Breath is an art installation that is located in the desolate Egyptian desert, not far from the shores of the Red Sea. The 1 million square foot artwork was created in March of 2007, and was meant to celebrate "the desert as a state of mind, a landscape of the mind," the artists say on their website.
It was filled with holes.
Satellite imagery shows Apamea being looted.
The civil war in Syria has damaged hundreds of archaeological sites, including the UNESCO World Heritage Sites, which are considered to be one of the oldest occupied areas of the Earth. Satellites have shown a lot of the destruction, with some of the strangest imagery showing destruction in the area. The entire ancient Roman city has been ravaged by looters since the start of the civil war, according to images from the internet.
"It looks like the surface of the moon," Emma Cunliffe, an archaeology researcher at Durham University in England, told Live Science in 2013). In eight months, the looted area exceeded the total excavated area.
Is there a lake of blood?
Is there a lake of blood? The image is courtesy of Cnes/spot image, Digital Globe, andgeoeye.
Outside of Sadr City lies a blood-red lake. There is no official explanation for the color of the water.
Ant-sy art.
Red harvester ants could be behind the weird polka-dot pattern in the vegetation near a volcano on the rim of the Grand Canyon. The image is from the Earth created by Google.
The pattern of polka-dots near the volcano may be related to ants. Red harvester ants are found in the desert around the Grand Canyon. Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, a specialist in image processing and satellite imagery analysis at the Politecnico of Torino in Ital, said that these pests can create mounds of up to 120 centimeters across and are typically surrounded by bare ground up to 10 square meters. The paper has not yet been peer-reviewed. Sparavigna says on-the-ground confirmation is needed to know if the mounds are to blame for the scattered circles.
There is an island in a lake.
There is an island in a lake. The Digital Globe is one of the credit agencies.
The world's largest island-in-a-Lake-on-an-island-in-a-Lake-on-an-island is a small strip of land in Canada. It is located inside one of the lakes that are 75 miles inland from the southern coast of Victoria Island. If it wasn't for the internet, this little "sub-sub-sub island" wouldn't have received its strange distinction. No human has ever set foot there.
The boneyard.
The boneyard is on the internet.
The Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, is where military planes go to die. The 2,600-acre cemetery of steel is closed to the general public, but you can see what's inside with a high-resolution view of what's inside. The boneyard at Davis Monthan was used in a music video for "Learning to Fly" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The band was performing in front of aircraft.
What is the biggest word?
This is what happens when you have a lot of money.
A billionaire Sheikh and member of Abu Dhabi's ruling family has had his name carved into the sand of an island in the Persian Gulf. The letters HAMAD are half a mile tall and 2 miles long, but they're visible from space. Normally, words written in sand wash away, but these letters are large enough to form waterways that absorb the encroaching tide. The tide can be seen flowing through the letters all the way to the M.
Elephants are seen in a wild view.
Wild View Elephants are shown.
Is it possible you won't get to see a herd of elephants in the wild? Satellites captured a few high-resolution images of a herd on the move in Chad.
Is there an alien Bunker?
The scientology-bunker is on the map.
Two large diamonds surrounded by a pair of circles were found etched onto the desert floor near Mesa Huerfanita, New Mexico. John Sweeney claimed that the site was a secret Bunker of the Church of Scientologists. Scientology is a religion that offers a precise path leading to a complete and certain understanding of one's true spiritual nature and one's relationship to self, family, groups, mankind, all life forms, the material universe, and the spiritual universe. According to the Daily Mail, these scientologists who fled a planetary Armageddon are said to be aided by symbols on the desert floor. The symbols will likely remain a mystery.
The Gobi Desert is located in the middle of the desert.
There are strange structures and patterns on the surface of China's Gobi Desert. The Digital Globe is a part of the Google.
There are mysterious structures and patterns etched into the surface of China's Gobi Desert. This is a secret military base and the structures are used for a variety of purposes including weapons testing, spy satellite calibration and testing of radar instrumentation. The Yagi antenna array, a device used for weather tracking and other atmospheric research, is the most elaborate feature, an intricate grid of perfectly straight lines that weave back and forth every few hundred feet for 20 miles.
The mapvertising of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
The Digital Globe has a credit for "mapvertising" on the Google Earth website.
Considering the number of people who troll Google Earth in their free time, it isn't surprising that enormous advertisements have started popping up in remote areas for their viewing pleasure. The world's largest Coca-Cola logo can be seen on a hillside in Chile, made of 70,000 empty coke bottles. A large picture of Colonel Sanders, the logo of Kentucky Fried Chicken, was once on the Extraterrestrial Highway in Nevada, but has since been removed.
Sizable wreck.
The Sizable Wreckage is an image credit from Digital Globe.
The S.S. Jassim ran aground and sank off the coast of Sudan in 2003 It was once one of the largest ships visible on the internet, and now appears to have sunk.
locked lips
The Digital Globe has an image of locked lips.
The luscious lips are located in a hill formation in Sudan.
Aussie plane?
Aussie plane? The image was taken from the Digital Globe, a subsidiary of Sensis.
A triangle with bright lights appeared in the middle of a field in Australia. ufologists called it a "triangle UFO" when it was first discovered in 2007. Other users said it could be an antenna for a wind farm. The antenna probably received and transmitted control signals when it formed a triangle with three wires.
A secret military base?
Satellite images of the Chinese desert.
An ex-CIA analyst told a website that he had found structures in the desert around the city of Kashgar in China's remote Western desert.
The buildings at the site were speculated to be part of a secret military base. The site is likely part of a major manufacturing or economic center, according to a technologist and geospatial blogger who has spent months in that part of China.
Satellite images from China.
There is a strange sight in China's Western desert.
There is a strange site in the Chinese desert.
Analysts said there's no reason that the structure in the complex would be linked to military activities. Stuart Hamilton, a professor at the College of William and Mary, said that the site is not ideal for a secret military base since it is close to a major population area.
