General

One thing is for sure, most of us that have used Google Earth like it and are even fascinated by it. Not so for some of the people who have had their homes placed in the photos. The same might be said for certain companies and government instillations. Google had taken some of the pertinent data out of some of the photos due to agreements made with these parties, especially good old Uncle Sam. I guess the government was not to happy about having some of their so-called secret bases made public. Hey wait a second doesn't most of the industrialized countries have satellites going overhead by now? To this I have to answer a resounding YES. So what is the complaint, or should I say why is the complaint? Everything is being seen that is above ground anyway, so what is the government accomplishing? It is the usual thing, they are keeping their stuff secret from US.

Google Earth is quite an astounding program. It is made up from satellite photos and photos taken by the Google crew, who ride around in cars all over the country taking photos of the landscape. Recently one of Google cars ran over an animal and the story made it all over the Internet. There are even before and after photos of the poor creature. Apparently it doesn't take much for us to amuse ourselves. There are some very famous photos that are included in the Google Earth selection and there are some puzzling ones also. If we look for famous buildings we can plug “White House” into the search bar and we get a photo of the White House South Facade, where some of the roof has been airbrushed. No doubt that was to hide the White House defenses from view. This is easily understood.

Those of us that use the current versions of Google Earth can appreciate the work that has gone into creating it. Some think that when you change destinations and you are taken out to orbit and then the Earth turns under you and you are brought to the location you requested all this movement is a waste of time. I admit it is all eyewash, but there is something very nice about it. It is true that it would be much faster to just have the screen blink and see your new location and there are plenty of people out there that worship speed and I can also understand that in this busy world. There is help for those people in the options set for Google Earth. You can set the time between destinations. There are people that are not fans of Google Earth and some of them are California lawmakers. They have introduced a bill that would censor Google Earth and fine the company $250,000 per day for violating certain citizen protections, whatever that means. It is my understanding that if your house appears on Google Earth you can drop them a line asking for its removal and it will be taken off. The bill was introduced by a representative from San Diego named Anderson.

I bet that one of the first places that people go to when they load Google Earth is Egypt to see the Great Pyramid and Sphinx. If you said no, you would certainly be in the minority. Strangely, if you put the word “Sphinx” into the search bar you get a sort of hollow headed model of the sphinx in 3D modeling mode. Is the designer of the model trying to tell us something, is he saying that the Sphinx is hollow and he believes that there could be something inside it? If this is so, I have never heard this theory before. One view on Google Earth is of a laser beam shooting up from the earth. Since there is no explanation of it and we can not even be sure that the photo is genuine, there is probably not much to discuss there, however those that know me, know that I can not leave things like this alone. I am wondering where the picture was taken or even when it was, since all picture info has been left off. It looks like it is a location in a wooded area or possibly a jungle. Could it have been a signal laser that was used during the Vietnam War, I wonder?

Before anyone goes off thinking that Google Earth is only good for looking at locations on earth and I can understand that because of its name, let me say that it is equally adept at looking at locations on Mars and the sky. I set Google Earth to the “Face On Mars” and disappointingly got the NASA ruination of the face from their photo that leaves out much of the data in the photo to try and convince us that there is no face. There are some very interesting anomalies on Mars and they can be seen with some digging. I went to the Cydonia Colles Region and moving north there is a black and white photo and in it seems to contain some very reflective material in spots. You have to enlarge the photo to see what I am talking about. There is a box in the corner of the photo that is entitled Tell-tale rocks at southern Acidalia Planitia.

It turns out that Google Earth can be a very useful tool for exploring, but it is censored in spots and some of its Mars views seem to have left out the more interesting anomalies. There is also an alternative to Google Earth and it is Virtual Earth by Microsoft. You can compare some of the features by going to the following website where they run both programs side by side. It seems that not all options are activated at this site, but you can still get a good idea of the difference between the two:
http://www.jonasson.org/maps/

One thing that I noticed right away was the fact that Google Earth provides slightly more magnification. Another thing that I noticed was that in aerial view, Google seems to have more realistic colors and better images, because Virtual Earth seems to be much darker. This might be adjustable, I don't know since I was on the comparison website. Both programs seem to be able to present you with extremely good maps of North America.

I am still in the phase where I am searching Google Earth for interesting things and you never know what you might come up with. I have even found a robot buddy that is on Mars and will talk with you. It is something like those old programs that would try and guess what you meant and give you their best answer which might even have been mostly questions. Google Earth is good for some exploration and perfect for killing time while waiting for the wife to get ready for that party, or to visit some friends.

I just want to finish up this article by saying that you can also view space and our place in it. The planets are available, along with constellations and even other galaxies. You can zoom in and out of views of the heavens just as you can on Earth and Mars.