Do you ever wonder what you ’re regard when you search out of your airplane window and recognize bizarre ruby-red pool or foreign immature circles on the ground below ? You ’re not alone . We speak to Gregory Dicum , author of the incredibleaerial landscape painting guidebook Window Seat , about the eldritch and most beautiful views from an plane . We have a gorgeous heading .
Dicum say io9 that the landscape the great unwashed find most cryptic is “ big round dark-green circles in the middle of [ North America ] . ” ( you could see an illustration in the effigy above . ) So what are those uncanny circles , anyway ? “ It ’s forebode pivot irrigation , ” he say . fundamentally they are tilled land . He continue , “ There ’s a well at the center of each one and then a farsighted arm with sprinkler on it . So it ’s sprinkling all aorund the well . At a landscape painting level you ’re run into a mathematical function of the aquifer . ” In other row , this kind of irrigation only work over aquifer , so the larger patterns of circles show where groundwater is easy accessible in the midwest . Dicum noted that these circles peter out in westerly and eastern regions where there is enough rain that farmer do n’t demand to tap aquifer . Pivot irrigation exists all over the world , but is the most common in the US midwest .
Here are some more window opinion that Dicum recommends . chatter to embiggen .
Basin and Range , Hawthorne , NV
Dicum says :
Not only is the lavatory and stray one of the thinnest spots in the earth ’s freshness ( result in lots of volcanoes ! ) , but people get up to some unhinged stuff there too : if you experience what to expect for your can spot the depressions from nuclear tests , some of the largest weapon depots on the satellite , creepy bio- and chem- warfare test ranges , and even the topographic point where they keep the aliens .
The Himalayas
Those are some serious mountains .
La Paz , Bolivia
say Dicum :
The highest working capital city in the world , it is a real trip . The runway is at 13,000 animal foot , which means you experience a pressure drop cloth when they launch the airplane door there . It also has to be very long : you end up going really fast before you raise off , and then only lightly . But all of a sudden it dangle off beneath you and you are flying over the city as it falls down the mountainside . and even though you ’re so high , there are huge mountains towering over you that you need to weave before you could get out of there .
The Great Salt Lake , UT
Dicum enthuses :
So much to see ! Besides the geologic features ( the lake was once part of a huge postglacial consistence of weewee , and you could see old shorelines everywhere , and salt flats of grade ) , there is all sorts of human activity : the large undecided stone mine in the world , the urban sprawl of Salt Lake City , onetime Mormon town grids , foreign army radical — and the sky are usually clear !
The Amazon Rain Forest
Dicum calls it “ an sea of green that goes on , uninterrupted , for hour , ” sum that “ flying above thing like the Amazon is the only fortune most of us have to really find out out these massive planetary features . ”
The Sahara
“ I have n’t done this , ” Dicum take on , “ but it ’s at the top of my bucketful list for the same intellect I love wing over the Amazon . ” All you see for thousands of statute mile are twirl , gilded sands and nothing else .
Greenland
This part is “ very heavily traveled ; thousands of planes a day fly between North America and Europe , and many of them get over the southerly tip of Greenland , ” says Dicum . “ It ’s magnificent : monumental glacier flowing down from the ice cap into the sea , toothed crag , eternal icefields . It ’s really shocking that we ’ve managed to sodomize up something so vast . ”
If you ’re fell and desire to know what you ’re see , 2d by second , Dicum and his colleagues have put together a web app that follows any flying in the US , identifying every country lineament you ’re go out . It ’s calledMondo Window , and it works on any escape in the US with wireless fidelity . Dicum said he ’s presently work on acquire Mondo Window installed on planes so that you’re able to get information about what you ’re see below on your aeroplane console table as you ’re wing . I would look on the Hades out of that .
In the meantime , you could harbour yourself on your upcoming flight by picking up a copy ofWindow Seat , orWindow Seat Europe .
Top photo by Glenn Young viaShutterstock . Everything else from Google satellite photos .
BooksScienceTravel
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , science , and culture news in your inbox daily .
News from the future , deliver to your present tense .
You May Also Like
