What is this big circle in Beijing?

April 15, 2010 12:23 AM

What is this big circle in Beijing? A Hadron Collider?

What is this big circle in Beijing? Looks like a Hadron Collider but it may just be a way to turn around a metro train. Any locals know what it is? Link to googlemap.

posted by priorpark17 to Technology (6 answers total)

Best answer: If you zoom out a bit and put maps on, you can that it is rail, and that on the left side is the china academy of railway sciences. I would guess it is a test railway track for them.
posted by scodger at 12:44 AM on April 15, 2010

Best answer: Yeah, looks like it is this . The china railway museum is also right next door.
posted by scodger at 12:50 AM on April 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks all
posted by priorpark17 at 1:22 AM on April 15, 2010

scodger has it. If you read Chinese and want a bit of a chuckle, you can read this blog post explaining how the peculiarities of the fengshui the track circle creates are responsible for the high rate of accidents at the nearby Huantieqiao (环铁桥 - 'Circular Track Bridge') on the city's Fifth Ring Road.
posted by Abiezer at 1:31 AM on April 15, 2010

If you zoom in you can see overpasses where the track goes over the road And it looks like it links up with the nearby railroad tracks Here
posted by delmoi at 3:10 AM on April 15, 2010

Incidentally, there is a synchrotron in Beijing (not a hadron collider -- as far as I know the only operational ones are the Tevatron at Fermilab, the RHIC at Brookhaven, and of course the LHC), but I believe it's underground and not visible from above.
posted by dorque at 5:21 AM on April 15, 2010 [1 favorite]