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Comment by b_emery | Hacker News Reader

And here it is on google maps: https://goo.gl/maps/qLSZxPZaATM2

Looking at it from space, I'm much more interested in the small circular clearings of regular size that are everywhere in the surrounding landscape. Each one looks the size of a truck. What are those all about?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_pivot_irrigation

I suspect the question was about these, which are MUCH smaller: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.0316037,-115.4345986,129m/da...

Yup, exactly.

I don't think they're a source of materials used in the project (my first guess) because they can be found quite far away from the site, are present across varied terrain, and lack road access and indicators of work (eg tailings). Such uniformity in natural features always piques my interest. Will just be one of those endless mysteries of the desert, I suppose.

Those look a lot like creosote rings [1]. Creosote's native to southern Nevada and grows in clonal colonies that end up looking like rings, and that looks like a nice wide place where water would gather.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrea_tridentata

Looks like natural phenomenon they are all over the place could be this http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18855020/

Or could be simply natural water drainage pools the middle dark spot in the middle kinda suggests that.

Too many of them and they are all over the desert for it to be man made.

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