I thought there was a site or forum for discussion of Google Earth/Google Maps oddities, but all I can find is the random and usually outdated thread. So we'll do it ourselves, here, Heinlein style - that is, right.

To start with, what the hell is this? I was scanning the imaging of Denver International Airport, you know, looking for aliens and NWO storm troopers amid the giant swastika, when I found this strange little... thing:



I've forgotten how to make a Google Maps URL contain a zoom factor, so click on the green arrow and "Zoom Here" a couple of times.

I'd say it's a sculpture except that it's really in the middle of nowhere. I'd say it's a cargo cult airplane except that the cults around DIA have plenty of planes already. So - maybe an aircraft fire and safety trainer, built from odd scraps of aircraft?

And what's your favorite Google Earth/Maps oddity? New ones preferred; I think everyone has seen the sideways car, the fighter jet parked in downtown Paris and Seattle's drunken buildings.

This doesn't really count as an oddity, but the GoogleEarth map of my neighborhood identifies a wild area across the Truckee River from us, the Oxbow Nature Conservancy, as "Ivan Sacks Park". Ivan Sacks park is next to us, on the south side of the river, not the north. I've never found a contact point to let them know they need to fix this.

Google Earth is a cool product, as is Google Maps, but neither are infallible.

I've found a number of such errors. If you poke around Centralia, PA - the town abandoned because of the underground coal fire - you'll find the marker for the adjacent townlet of Byrnesville (also abandoned, and how's that for a namephreak?) at a random location too far north. It should be in the larger egg-shaped clearing to the south.

I've spent far too much time recently searching the area around Chernobyl - very sharp imaging, eerie as hell. I can't find the truck and helicopter graveyard seen in photos, and can only assume it's in the low-rez areas outside the immediate focus.

Besides the six block reactors, four in the original complex and two under construction at lower left, it looks as if another new reactor was to be a lightwater type, judging from the incomplete cooling towers to the southeast.

Save the content below into a thing.kml file for a Google Earth marker.

And if you go on Google Earth - as opposed to Google Maps - you can find out what it is. See http://www.firehouse.com/training/news/ ... train.html .

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<kml xmlns="http://earth.google.com/kml/2.2">
<Document>
<name>KmlFile</name>
<Style id="sh_ylw-pushpin">
<IconStyle>
<scale>1.3</scale>
<Icon>
<href>http://maps.google.com/mapfiles/kml/pushpin/ylw-pushpin.png</href>
</Icon>
<hotSpot x="20" y="2" xunits="pixels" yunits="pixels"/>
</IconStyle>
</Style>
<Style id="sn_ylw-pushpin">
<IconStyle>
<scale>1.1</scale>
<Icon>
<href>http://maps.google.com/mapfiles/kml/pushpin/ylw-pushpin.png</href>
</Icon>
<hotSpot x="20" y="2" xunits="pixels" yunits="pixels"/>
</IconStyle>
</Style>
<StyleMap id="msn_ylw-pushpin">
<Pair>
<key>normal</key>
<styleUrl>#sn_ylw-pushpin</styleUrl>
</Pair>
<Pair>
<key>highlight</key>
<styleUrl>#sh_ylw-pushpin</styleUrl>
</Pair>
</StyleMap>
<Placemark>
<name>Jim&apos;s Mystery</name>
<LookAt>
<longitude>-104.6704474444809</longitude>
<latitude>39.90195792153809</latitude>
<altitude>0</altitude>
<range>211.0325332579924</range>
<tilt>0</tilt>
<heading>0.007473788249918442</heading>
<altitudeMode>relativeToGround</altitudeMode>
</LookAt>
<styleUrl>#msn_ylw-pushpin</styleUrl>
<Point>
<coordinates>-104.6705585226965,39.90193455633632,0</coordinates>
</Point>
</Placemark>
</Document>
</kml>

I have only a couple of layers turned on by default. But when I want to know what something is, I expand the "Gallery" category and then turn on "Google Earth Community".

It's weird when you think about it now that just about every spot on Earth has been inspected in great detail by people all over the world. There is nothing hidden any more, unless it's under cover or in a low-res area (like my house... in a low-res strip less than a mile wide and ten high... must be the Cheney effect).