The Taijitu is far better known by the name of the principle which it represents, Yin and Yang - a concept originating in ancient China which describes all things as being composed of two opposing but complementary forces. From Wikipedia:

One cannot exist without the other. For example, day cannot exist without night. Light cannot exist without darkness.

How fitting that it should appear, as if by magic, here in a pool of water on the edge of the Saharan desert.

Thanks to Carlos da Costa F.

Guess where The Longest Conveyor Belt in the World is? Western Sahara of course.

(More than half of the conveyor is in high-res, but the particularly cool section shown here has been captured in super high-res as part of the National Geographic Megaflyover project.)

The conveyor is 100 kilometres long and runs all the way to the coast from the phosphate mines of Bu Craa (which sounds a lot like a George Lucas place name to me).

If we zoom quite far out (to help grasp the scale of this massive machine) it looks distinctly like a lot of phosphate has been lost to the Saharan winds…

Thanks: Carlos Vlc.

Despite Western Sahara being one of the most sparsely populated territories in the world (just over 1 person per square kilometre) Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) have been fighting since 1975 about who should control this territory.

Western Sahara has no railways and only 6,200km of roads, but they do have some rather cool large type which (according to our submitter) translates to ‘Allah, the Nation, the King’ - which by all accounts is the motto of the Moroccan Monarchy. It seems to be right next to some sort of encampment and looks to be right on the border of Moroccan and SADR territory.

Spain was in charge here prior to ‘75, and over on nearby Gran Canaria there’s an image of the SADR’s version of the Western Sahara flag with text in Spanish that reads “Sahara Vencera”, literally “Sahara Will Win”. However, according to Flagspot this image might well be reversed from its intended direction… Suspicious methinks.

Thanks to Uri and Virtual Globetrotting.

Still in Western Sahara, here’s some weird squares which I can’t explain… Anyone?

Thanks to John Seddon (I think, or it might have been Patrick again ).

Er, Saharan Shipwrecks? Yup, shipwrecks in the desert! Okaaaay, so it’s the beach, but it is the Sahara

Just down the coast there’s another wreck, and as I zoomed out from there I found a third!

Flickr has a picture of a shipwreck on the coast of Western Sahara, but I don’t think it’s any of these three! Can anyone find it?

Update: Reader Brandon found an astonishing 6 more shipwrecks on this strip of coastline! The last two are actually just across the border in Morocco but we’re totally letting that slip

Thanks to Patrick!