51

On a flight over Utah, I spotted a strange shape on the flight route app on the seat LCD that looks just like an airliner:

Easter Egg lake

Not believing my eyes, I checked OsmAnd and sure enough, it's there!

Here it is on OpenStreetMap: http://openstreetmap.org/#map=11/41.27/-111.8

Pity it was clouded over, so I couldn't see it for real...

Its Wikipedia page doesn't mention its shape: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineview_Dam

Could it be an Easter Egg or just pure coincidence?

Improve this question
4
  • At first I thought it was airplane's shadow.
    – Francois
    Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 9:48
  • 4
    This lake is almost begging for a plane to crash in it. I wouldn't fly over it.
    – blankip
    Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 19:05
  • 1
    It's probably where one of the fanless DC-8s crashed 75 million years ago. You're not going to have a perfect safety record when transporting ~10 trillion people.
    – Nick T
    Commented Oct 10, 2015 at 15:44
  • 1
    "a man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest ..." la la la
    – Mawg
    Commented Oct 11, 2015 at 9:41

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
49

It does remotely look like an airplane as Google Maps / Earth reveals:

enter image description here

Improve this answer
6
  • 4
    Looks like a bird to me, well airliners are kinda oversized birds anyway.
    – Furkan Omay
    Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 5:38
  • 32
    @FurkanOmay A bird? A plane? It's super-lake!
    – Hagen von Eitzen
    Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 6:01
  • 9
    I clearly see a Saturn V as it passes through the sound barrier.
    – dotancohen
    Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 12:32
  • @dot what is the split tail, then? If they are stabilisation fins, where are the thrusters?
    – John Dvorak
    Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 14:38
  • 2
    Rocket exhaust!
    – dotancohen
    Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 14:40
37

It's clearly visible in Google Maps, where you'll also notice that it is much larger than a real airliner.

The human brain is very good at recognizing pattern, and in your case it identified this lake loosely resembling an airliner. The phenomenon of recognizing patterns in random data is called Apophenia.

So in summary, there is no reason to assume this lake is not real and its shape anything other than coincidence.

Improve this answer
6
  • 1
    Also humans can deliberate build such forms like a city in the shape of a airplane
    – jean
    Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 11:20
  • 6
    You say apophenia, I say pareidolia
    – John Dvorak
    Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 14:42
  • That's what I was wondering: Did the reservoir builders intentionally build it so?
    – Gnubie
    Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 19:51
  • @Gnubie Unlikely it was deliberate. The humans only really choose where the dam goes; the shape of the resulting reservoir is down to the landscape provided by mother nature.
    – Nigel Harper
    Commented Oct 10, 2015 at 7:31
  • @jean sadly link is now broken :/
    – Mark Mayo
    Commented Apr 18, 2016 at 12:50
19

That's Pineview Reservoir. It has a three-fingered shape (or fuselage-and-wings shape) because it was built at the confluence of several streams. It is indeed a real body of water, but not technically a lake.

Sources:

Improve this answer
2
  • I've been there many times.
    – zwiebelspaetzle
    Commented Oct 7, 2015 at 21:56
  • 4
    "not technically a lake" A man-made lake is still a lake.
    – David Richerby
    Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 7:59

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .