The Google Timelapse satellites have recorded images of the world since 1984, and it shows how the enigmatic Area 51 has expanded over the years.
Without a doubt, Area 51 is one of the most polemic national facilities in history. The military testing base located in Nevada has been a long-term target for an enormous amount of theories that, mainly, argue about the existence of aliens. This conspiracy theorists assure that Area 51 is the house of alien technology in the U.S., even when Administration after Administration, the government has said that this is only a military facility.
However, recent data brought by the Google Timelapse’s images show how this base has expanded greatly since 1984, the year when the first images were collected. This station is located between a dry lake bed and a small mountain, and its fenced entirely with armed guards securing every meter of the surroundings.
According to the images from Timelapse, there has been an improvement of the main runway that right now is wider and longer. They also built a second runway, toward the East of the base. Also, the panoramic photos reveal how the engineers had been digging the area all of these years and expanding the amplitude of the base. This is logical when it comes to any excavation facility. However, the purpose of the base is unknown, which makes all this situation more polemic.
“Area 51 has always been a magnet for those who believe the US Government knows a lot more about UFOs than they are prepared to reveal to the public,” Nigel Watson, author of the UFO Investigations Manual, stated in an interview.
How Timelapse works
This feature allows any internet user to observe how the planet has changed over the last 32 years. The company collected 33 cloud-free annual mosaics since 1984, to create the videos. These images are gathered by the Carnegie Mellon University CREATE Lab’s Time Machine library, a center that possesses the technology that allows Google the creation of Timelapse.
Google combined over five million satellite images collected by five different satellite over the course of the last 32 years. Most of these photos come from Landsat, a NASA observation project that gathers Earth´s images since 1970.
Using the Earth Engine software, Google gives a tool to any user on the web that wants to know how the Earth has changed over the last three decades. Just by clicking the desired area or looking in Youtube for highlights, anyone can see the differences from a year to another. The content is even shareable with other users. Google wanted to demonstrate the power of their computational structure by recreating the Earth´s surface changes. And they sure did.
Area 51, Miami, China, and even the Arctic. All the places in the world can be seen from Timelapse, and the users can experience the construction of a city, the melting of the ice in the poles and the expansion of an enigmatic facility. All in just one feature.
Source: Daily Mail