Mysterious patterns across Chinese deserts explained Grid
patterns were noticeably man-made and are spread throughout
Western China's deserts. Sat, Nov 03 2012 at 9:35 AM A
mysterious grid of dots spanning several miles of Western
China's sand dunes like a giant chessboard may be the result of
geological surveys for nickel mines, according to new analysis
of satellite images of the area. "In the satellite maps, we can
see a man-made texture on the soil, a huge band which seems
created by relatively small holes or mounds," wrote the study
author, Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, a physicist at Italy's
Polytechnic University of Turin, on Oct. 25 on the website
arXiv.org, ahead of publication to a scientific journal. "This
curious texture on the desert soil was probably produced by the
pinpointing of geophysical [research]." In 2010, Sparavigna
started investigating Google Earth satellite images of China’s
remote Taklamakan desert to study the textures carved into the
sand dunes by the wind. In the process, the amate