My guess would be a copyright protection trap laid by Google.

Although it does look like the roads in the lower left in color and width, those roads bend as they go over ridges and valleys, while the lines of triangle-and-circles do not, although the t&c lines do have color changes, when they go over the ridges, like the roads do. But they're arrow-straight on the monitor -- I held the side of a piece of paper up to my screen to check.

One *could* make a road which looks straight from the air, despite going over ridges, but it would result in some odd kinks and jinks in the actual road. I'll be interested to hear more on this.

Check this out, its a topo map of the same area, with the words "inactive target" listed.

http://mapper.acme.com/?lat=37.666905&long=-116.02786&scale=12&theme=Topo&width=4&height=3&dot=Yes

Isn't it obvious? It's a landing strip for aliens. They have one just like it down in Peru.

Don't forget that They used to do nuclear testing somewhere out here. So maybe this is a gridline layout of ground-zero effects? Maybe someone can measure the distances between the circles and compare it to an atomic blast?

aliens are coming!!! arhHHhhHhh... *blink* *blink* *blink* :glup: arhHHHhhHHHhAAAaa...

Cvirtue is correct in that the roads could be laid out so that they appear straight in spite of the terrain - however, that would only work if viewed from one particular direction (coincidentally the direction that the satellite happens to be looking). And why would anyone want to lay out roads with such an odd property?

These markings almost certainly are not on the ground and have been added to the piccy. BTW how did Mike Scofield come across the markings?

That is the area in which you go underground. It is ringed like that because of perimitors, or however you spell that. Thats what it is. It was made before Satalites were in the skies.

One of the few fun parts of flying east from California is to look out the window at all the strange things in the dessert. Perfectly straight roads going god knows where for god knows what. Tracks in the desert will last hundreds of years due to the fragile soil. No doubt a lot of the strange things are various bombing targets and what not from the various military bases. Thanks for the picture.

I think that it's a target for Air Force bombing training flights. There's a big air force base north of Vegas and every time I drive by there I see a jets flying really low over the mountains. A couple years ago two Russian built MI-24 Hind gunship helicopters flew right over my car near there on my way to Death Valley. I was wondering what Russian helicopters were doing there, I still am.

Plus, if you look carefully you can see pock-mark craters from bombs inside and near the design.

the triangle isn't equalateral so the inner shapes are oblong rather than circular.

this would suggest that the picture was taken from a southerly direction, which (i would expect) would cause the straight lines of the triangle to appear to be more distorted due to the terrain. since the lines aren't distorted, it suggests the picture is taken from directly above, which begs the question, if it is a gridline layout to measure explosive effects, why oblongs instead of perfect circles?

of course thats assuming the picture isnt digitally manipulated for copyrighting or 'other' purposes. government conspiracy? (i say in jest)

fascinating anyway.

I can't see it. I can see the img attached to the post, but not the link. The link comes up googlemaps...but blank. Was that supposed to be the original image?

This is nearby as well...
http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=groom+lake&ll=37.401409,-116.867967&sll=34.710938,-112.109525&spn=0.004849,0.007467&sspn=3.851563,7.259440&t=k&hl=en

Err wait, that didn't work. can we post links here? click

You drop your dud bomb, then you drive out to the site and see how closely you hit. Then you take what's left back to the shop and try different fins on the bomb casing to see about improving the design.

The rings don't merely tell you how accurate you were, they're roads so you can recover your dud, and the triangle makes it unmistakable, even for a rookie pilot. The triangle is a road, too, in case you miss the target by that far. The terrain is flat so that finding your bomb casing won't be too difficult, even if it's buried itself in the sand. Weather conditions are good for practise year-round. And there's nobody around to complain about bombing runs.

But it probably hasn't been used for training bomber crews for decades, at least since modern targeting technology became available. Someone who built bomb casings or trained there might remember that target even today, if you can find him or her.

Bomber Man, it's an interesting thing that you've posted, but I don't think it applies to this particular picture. The thing is laid across hills, not flat, and the lower left triangle corner goes across what's fairly clearly a deep stream valley. (The actual presence of water is probably seasonal.)

Kat, I've seen things like that one when flying over the desert in commercial flights, too. That one is much more obviously an installation of some kind.

so. . . You puts the lines there on the ground or else your dud bombs don't gets found?

I like that explanation excpet it doesn't explain the backwards letter "E" at the top point of the triangle.

Maybe this is really an alien eye chart used for testing their space pilots before they issue flying licenses (point your tentacle in the direction you think the symbol is going).

If the triangle is really there, other flyovers should show it.

I had a little spare time, so I tried to find the same area via the satellite images at terraserver. I didn't find any triangles, but that may only mean that I didn't find the right location. Somone with more time, or more familiarity with satellite images, may well succeed.

This, and several other anomalies in the desert, have been confirmed by fan websites to be bombing targets. Here's another weird one; a compass: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=34.953432,-117.871714&spn=0.019870,0.030770&t=k&hl=en

Sorry, you have to switch to satellite view and zoom in a lot to see it.

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=37.487369,-116.228828&spn=0.013947,0.021157&t=k&hl=en

I was dragging the mouse around and lost the triangle. I looked for it again and I ran into that nearby. (Assuming I linked right as well) If you zoom in, you can see concentric circles. No triangle this time though. Guess it's not an isolated incident?

(For some reason you might have to change it to "sattelite" map, but just hit the zooms and it should still be centered in the right place)