China copper smelters plan to cut output after margins fall
The output cuts underscore the industry’s struggle with a shortage of feedstocks caused by recent mine production setbacks.
An immense chessboard-like grid which mysteriously appeared in the deserts of China’s Xinjiang province several years ago could be the result of exploratory surveys for nickel.
NBC reports that the grid was first noticed by foreign observers in 2010 when physicist and amateur archeologist Amelia Carolina Sparavigna from Italy’s Polytechnic University of Turin was using Google Earth satellite images to study sand patterns created by the wind, as well as search for long-lost byways of the historic Silk Road.
During her searches Sparavigna stumbled upon a mysterious chessboard-like grid of dots in the middle of the desert. The grid was around 4.8 miles in length and unmistakably man-made.
According to Sparavigna subsequent research has determined that the grid is most likely the result of geological surveys for nickel reserves, which the Chinese media recently revealed exist in great abundance beneath the sand dunes of Xinjiang province.
Sparavigna has already become somewhat of a satellite image buff, uncovering patterns in Peru in 2011 which she claims were geoglyphs. The Italian-based physiciast now advocates the creation of a database of satellite images of man-made featuers, as “it can anticipate mining activity and development of a region.”
The odd grid in Talkamkan Desert is merely one of a considerable number of strange, man-made formations which satellite imaging has uncovered in China’s remote western reaches.
Image courtesy of Google Maps
Comments
golddigger69
The nickel here is all in armour plate. This and the other “mining features” on the website all have to due with a skunk-works military base in the middle of nowhere. Your chess board is a blast test set-up to test for deflection of energy. Using historical images in Google earth you can see it under construction in 2005 and then after use. A row of “half-track” vehicles is clearly visible between the big squares, blast deflectors made of packed earth. The target with the jets is the same sort of thing.
One grid is seen also under construction in 2004, and you can see white paint running in small creeks near the active end of the construction. I suspect they are layouts of a restive cities or villages, and used to train commandos in the location of buildings and alleyways before an assault.
And the runways–yes, runways, some active, some abandoned.