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Low Percent Lunge
Jan 29, 2007



Wallace the Great posted:

If you type something as generic as "USA" as one of the terms in a Google Maps directions search, does it place the point at a place you have searched for maps before? I guess what I'm asking is, when you put "USA" into your directions search, where did it have as your starting location, as in, where in the U.S. exactly?

It starts mine max zoomed out and centered on the USA

Edit: Google considers Coffeyville, KS to be the exact center of the USA

Low Percent Lunge fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Dec 3, 2010

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Wallace the Great
May 12, 2007
Now you're all in big trouble.
Ok, that's what I was wondering, because it seemed odd that a vacation company from California was advertising in the middle of nowhere, South East Kansas. Also odd because that's not 20 miles from where I grew up. Freaking me out, here...

KaosFactor
Dec 10, 2000

Rommel Rommel
When I routed USA to Japan in started me around the Kansas/Oklahoma/Missouri border.

I was wondering about the helicopter thing too. Thermals and pressure differentials caused by the artificial rapid elevation changes?

hunnert car pileup
Oct 28, 2007

the first world was a mistake

JammyLammy posted:

This always got on my nerves when the google-car was driving around. People were trying to organize "wacky" poo poo to do near the car to get their photo taken. I want to see candid people doing going about normal life, not internet nerds putting on costumes and acting like retards :argh:


Most of the time, normal people are just giving :wtf: faces towards the car.

dZPnJOm8QwUAseApNj
Apr 15, 2002

arf bark woof
Related, though Google street view: http://9eyes.tumblr.com/

Dacke
Jun 29, 2006

Blimpkin posted:

This bing bird's eye stuff is really neat. Especially that you can change the orientation of the view, and all that. I can't wait till they fly over Dubai again and we get a nice new view of the Burj Khalifa, it's going to look great.

I always liked that image on google maps of Dubai dumping raw sewage into the desert sand myself. I think if I check back in another year or so it will just be a massive poo poo river running into the Gulf of Oman.

Magnificent Quiver
May 8, 2003


I once found a graveyard of giant dead cargo ships north of Chernobyl. Wish I knew how to get back to it.

Panamaniac
Jun 18, 2007

HEROES NEVER DIE

Algol Star posted:


Disappointed.

Take Highway 1 northwest from Seoul, to Gunna-myon, where the highway ends, according to the map. The road, although unmarked, continues Northwest, until it reaches Panmunjom. Once at Panmunjom, turn Northeast and try to run between the 7 small buildings that are bisected by a raised crosswalk. Watch out for the ROK JSA soldiers that will be stationed at the corners of those buildings. Praise Dear Leader for your safe journey.


Click here for the full 1920x886 image.

Lowkin
Aug 27, 2007

Magnificent Quiver posted:

I once found a graveyard of giant dead cargo ships north of Chernobyl. Wish I knew how to get back to it.

When you say Chernobyl I assume you mean the nuclear power plant. It's knowhere near the ocean.

Dacke
Jun 29, 2006

Magnificent Quiver posted:

I once found a graveyard of giant dead cargo ships north of Chernobyl. Wish I knew how to get back to it.

I found a small graveyard of ships just south of Chernobyl but that's about it. I'm assuming that these were some irradiated ships they used for transport to/from the plant.

Raw_Beef
Jul 2, 2004

We know what you been up to and my advice on that little venture is to pack it in. It won't work. It will all end in tears.
Theres a large ship graveyard near Murmansk, Russia.

Godholio
Aug 28, 2002

Does a bear split in the woods near Zheleznogorsk?

Wallace the Great posted:

If you type something as generic as "USA" as one of the terms in a Google Maps directions search, does it place the point at a place you have searched for maps before? I guess what I'm asking is, when you put "USA" into your directions search, where did it have as your starting location, as in, where in the U.S. exactly?

Wouldn't it have been quicker to actually try it than type all that out?

nildrohain454
Nov 17, 2006

Conk-a-reeeee!!!

KaosFactor posted:

When I routed USA to Japan in started me around the Kansas/Oklahoma/Missouri border.

I was wondering about the helicopter thing too. Thermals and pressure differentials caused by the artificial rapid elevation changes?

From what I read, that was the jist of it. The temperature difference cause a downward suction of air into the hole (I think, feel free to correct me) which if a pilot isn't fast enough in compensating, will cause the copter to crash. Apparently this can happen with any large enough hole, not just the mine.

For content: have a giant pink bunny:

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=k&om=1&ll=44.244273,7.769737&spn=0.001003,0.002548&z=19



And a Coca-Cola logo:

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&t=h&ie=UTF8&ll=-18.529244,-70.249852&spn=0.001328,0.002548&z=19



And a blood red lake in Iraq:

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&t=k&q=Iraq&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Iraq&ll=33.395673,44.488481&spn=0.004676,0.010192&z=17

Skippy D. Doodah
Jan 5, 2006

It looks to me like an airplane on the roof of a building in Manhattan.

http://tinyurl.com/2fxyaz5

Curly Shuffle
May 31, 2001

Toilet Rascal

Lowkin posted:

When you say Chernobyl I assume you mean the nuclear power plant. It's knowhere near the ocean.

Cargo ships are also used on large rivers, like large rivers people use to cool nuclear power plants.

Edit: This might be it. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&ll=51.283736,30.212467&spn=0.003872,0.009398&t=h&z=17

Curly Shuffle fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Dec 3, 2010

GWBBQ
Jan 2, 2005


Trubadurix posted:

It looks weird, but the explanation is quite simple and boring. The two guys in the diving suits are friends of the google-car driver, so they knew when the car was going to pass...and staged this.
I'm pretty sure that's the town that organized fun and unusual stuff all over for the Google cars to spot.

Dacke posted:

I found a small graveyard of ships just south of Chernobyl but that's about it. I'm assuming that these were some irradiated ships they used for transport to/from the plant.
Those ships ran at least to Kiev, I can't remember but I think the river is deep and wide enough that most of them could make it all the way out to the Mediterranean Sea. There were problems for years because people would go into the Exclusion Zone illegally and strip parts from decommissioned vehicles, some of which were those ships, then sell the parts cheap to people who had no idea they were contaminated and still radioactive.

torjus
Nov 22, 2005

I want YOU to MSPaint!

GWBBQ posted:

I'm pretty sure that's the town that organized fun and unusual stuff all over for the Google cars to spot.
Sorry for taking part in the derail, but no, it's not.

Gestalt Pie
May 21, 2008

That's all that was in the cupboard!
I totally read the title as "Identify strange things in Google Mars" :saddowns:

DocBubonic
Mar 11, 2003

Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis
I'd like to know what this thing is.



Its a big concrete circle in the middle of a Nature Preserve. Baker's Lake Nature Preserve (42.141817,-88.117471)just south of Barrington Illinois.

retspooh
Jun 20, 2006

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&i...008256&t=h&z=18

The "Cactus Dome" contains radioactive soil and debris mixed with cement.


http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&i...066047&t=h&z=15

Here you can see part of the crater from the first hydrogen bomb detonation "Ivy Mike." It destroyed a small island.

The Taped Crusader
Nov 22, 2008
This is exactly the thread I needed. When I was flying into San Francisco this summer, I spotted these brightly colored fields. What the hell am I looking at? Algae farms?

Dacke
Jun 29, 2006

The Taped Crusader posted:

This is exactly the thread I needed. When I was flying into San Francisco this summer, I spotted these brightly colored fields. What the hell am I looking at? Algae farms?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_pond

Perestroika
Apr 8, 2010

JammyLammy posted:

Ok, I'm going to be the retard and ask how are helicopters getting sucked in?

I'm not an aviator or anything, so take this with a brick of salt.

But I'd guess that a hole this size causes a pretty significant downwash when air passes over it.
So a strong wind might cause a pretty big turbulence around the edge which might be strong enough to force a helicopter down.

Alternatively, it might have something to do with the downwash from the helicopter itself, and the hole causes the air-stream to travel back up the sides of the hole when it hits the ground and then somehow it folds back down upon the helicopter.

Just guessing at this point, hopefully there's somebody here with a firmer grip on aerodynamics.

Perestroika fucked around with this message at 11:24 on Dec 3, 2010

Stuntcock
Oct 15, 2000

Annoyed, but NOT DEAD

Perestroika posted:

I'm not an aviator or anything, so take this with a brick of salt.

But I'd guess that a hole this size causes a pretty significant downwash when air passes over it.
So a strong wind might cause a pretty big turbulence around the edge which might be strong enough to force a helicopter down.

Alternatively, it might have something to do with the downwash from the helicopter itself, and the hole causes the air-stream to travel back up the sides of the hole when it hits the ground and then somehow it folds back down upon the helicopter.

Just guessing at this point, hopefully there's somebody here with a firmer grip on aerodynamics.
I'm incredibly interested in this, too.

crumpuppet
Mar 22, 2007

ROBORT > EVERYTHING
Yo this thread is cool and all, but I just want to point out that Google Maps has built-in URL shortening now. You just have to enable it in the Labs section, top right labelled "New!".



The "link" option then generates short URLs automatically. Works for Street View as well.

Wallace the Great
May 12, 2007
Now you're all in big trouble.

Godholio posted:

Wouldn't it have been quicker to actually try it than type all that out?

Sure. I had tried it, and it put me at Coffeyville, KS, but then again I often start searches from that general area, so I thought that maybe Google remembered that was my typical "start point." I was wanting outside verification that, indeed, Southeast Kansas is the center of the universe (USA). Thanks for humoring me.

A Furious Foetus
Aug 15, 2009

clarkwgriswold posted:

http://9eyes.tumblr.com/

Looks like this guy had the idea before you, OP

Awful lot of prostitutes on Street View.

GWBBQ
Jan 2, 2005


DocBubonic posted:

I'd like to know what this thing is.



Its a big concrete circle in the middle of a Nature Preserve. Baker's Lake Nature Preserve (42.141817,-88.117471)just south of Barrington Illinois.
I found a Yelp review that mentions a "historic round barn," I would guess that's the foundation. I can't find anything else on it because it's a bird habitat for species including the barn owl, making searches pretty much useless.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/bakers-lake-nature-preserve-barrington

Perestroika posted:

I'm not an aviator or anything, so take this with a brick of salt.

But I'd guess that a hole this size causes a pretty significant downwash when air passes over it.
So a strong wind might cause a pretty big turbulence around the edge which might be strong enough to force a helicopter down.

Alternatively, it might have something to do with the downwash from the helicopter itself, and the hole causes the air-stream to travel back up the sides of the hole when it hits the ground and then somehow it folds back down upon the helicopter.

Just guessing at this point, hopefully there's somebody here with a firmer grip on aerodynamics.
This says air currents but I can't find any primary sources.
http://www.abazias.com/diamondblog/diamond-industry/a-brief-history-of-the-worlds-largest-open-pit-diamond-mine

It's way too big for rotor wash to be the problem, my best educated guess is that it's similar to a lee wave

TheOriginalEd
Oct 29, 2007

Caffeine Transcendent

JammyLammy posted:

Ok, I'm going to be the retard and ask how are helicopters getting sucked in?

As far as I can understand it, the hole is big enough to cause hot air to leak from the crust in a steady column. The hot air having a different density than the cold air around it causes the helicopter to drop altitude if not accounted for.

nurrwick
Jul 5, 2007

GWBBQ posted:

I found a Yelp review that mentions a "historic round barn," I would guess that's the foundation. I can't find anything else on it because it's a bird habitat for species including the barn owl, making searches pretty much useless.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/bakers-lake-nature-preserve-barrington

This says air currents but I can't find any primary sources.
http://www.abazias.com/diamondblog/diamond-industry/a-brief-history-of-the-worlds-largest-open-pit-diamond-mine

It's way too big for rotor wash to be the problem, my best educated guess is that it's similar to a lee wave

From what I remember of ground school and aerodynamics classes, any air flowing across a sharp boundary like that would attempt to follow the contour of the land; as soon as the more or less laminar low-speed flow hits that edge, the flow will attempt to fill the vacuum left by the ground no longer being there by forming a turbulent flow immediately below it, pulling the flow down into the hole somewhat. It's the same principle that allows you to draft off tractor-trailers on the highway, only the air is moving instead of the restrictive surface.

[edit]I sort of take back what I said. A large enough diameter hole would have that problem there, but these narrow ultra-deep holes apparently do actually have a change in air density associated with them:

http://lerevdr.wordpress.com/7-amazing-holes-the-helicopter-experts/

[double edit] You know, I read more of that blog post there and boy howdy there's a lot of internet tough guy to wade through.

nurrwick fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Dec 3, 2010

mega dy
Dec 6, 2003

That lake probably isn't actually red. The capture device probably just had an IR band; the image is not true color. I work with orthoimagery and I see this a lot.

edit: Although the surrounding water is blue-green, so that's not true. Must be some kind of iron sediment or something.

0rganDonor
Jan 19, 2007

dy. posted:

That lake probably isn't actually red. The capture device probably just had an IR band; the image is not true color. I work with orthoimagery and I see this a lot.

edit: Although the surrounding water is blue-green, so that's not true. Must be some kind of iron sediment or something.

Seems to me it's another salt pond, there are a couple to the south of the red lake.

GWBBQ
Jan 2, 2005


One awesome thing I found that I forgot to mention about that Russian diamond mine is that the Soviet engineers tackled the problem of permafrost by thawing the land with jet engines so they could mine it :black101:

twistedmentat
Nov 21, 2003

Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

A Furious Foetus posted:

Awful lot of prostitutes on Street View.

Hookers, Car crashes and people giving the finger view.

Hahahah. There's one shot that's in the town I live in. Right by the bus station I use to get out of here and to work.

There were two things on Google Earth I remember being shown once but I can't find then.

One was a graveyard of Russian aircraft which contained a bunch of crazy stuff. I found the Russian space shuttle, but this one was way bigger.

Second was the Scientology bunker were :lron:'s writings are kept on ruby quartz tablets or something else and has giant alien "stop here" signs on top.

Blind Rasputin
Nov 25, 2002

Farewell, good Hunter. May you find your worth in the waking world.

I hear there is some bunker complex somewhere where all the world's seeds are kept in case of some catastrophe? :tinfoil: We gotta find it on google maps.

Any ideas as to what that black mark is in Greenland? According to the distance legend it is something like 20 miles long? So it's definitely not an airfield, or if it is it's an airfield and a base of some sort. I guess it could also be some very large radar array.

I honestly think it is just a google maps typo. Just why the hell would they actually want to hide something with a big black mark when they could just hide it with a white mark and nobody would ever be able to tell the difference? Greenland in Bing is just one big fuckoff white spot.

In my experience the proverbial "they" don't really bother hiding things (except for that submarine propeller) that are just shaped like buildings because the average layman couldn't guess what they were if they tried. Rival governments sure as poo poo don't use google maps for their spying, if there was something there which was a national security issue their own birds would have snapped a bunch of pictures of it already.

Hobnob
Feb 23, 2006

Ursa Adorandum
The black mark is just some weird artefact of the satellite photo compositing. If you look about 120 miles north of the black mark, you can see an apparent light brown-golden area that's larger but about the same orientation as the black thing, and if you zoom in it's obviously just some weird exposure thing going on at the edge of a photo.

Hobnob fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Dec 3, 2010

withak
Jan 15, 2003


Fun Shoe

Blind Rasputin posted:

I hear there is some bunker complex somewhere where all the world's seeds are kept in case of some catastrophe? :tinfoil: We gotta find it on google maps.

The Svalbard one is somewhere in here:
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=78.237748,15.461884&spn=0.05123,0.254745&t=h&z=12

(edit: Probably here.)

Another is here somewhere:
http://maps.google.com/maps?&ll=51.067638,-0.088209&sspn=0.025,0.025&ie=UTF8&ll=51.067574,-0.088749&spn=0.00987,0.015922&z=16


quote:

Any ideas as to what that black mark is in Greenland? According to the distance legend it is something like 20 miles long? So it's definitely not an airfield, or if it is it's an airfield and a base of some sort. I guess it could also be some very large radar array.

It's missing satellite data. There is nothing hidden there but snow and ice. Getting clear satellite images that far north is kind of hard to do.

withak fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Dec 3, 2010

Lullabee
Oct 24, 2010

Rock a bye bay-bee
In the beehive

A Furious Foetus posted:

Awful lot of prostitutes on Street View.

I love the one of the random kid sitting on a side walk by itself.
:psyduck:

SyHopeful
Jun 24, 2007
May an IDF soldier mistakenly gun down my own parents and face no repercussions i'd totally be cool with it cuz accidents are unavoidable in a low-intensity conflict, man
I've always wondered why Lake Baikal has a superhighway disappearing into its depths...

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withak
Jan 15, 2003


Fun Shoe
That superhighway is about 0.9 miles wide.

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