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NASA

If you look at the NASA satellite photo above, you can pick out, in the generally dark western plains, a weird clump of lights up near the Canadian border.

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Those are the fracking fields of the Bakken oil boom.

Here’s a close up:

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bakken_vir_2012317

NASA

NPR’s Robert Krulwich points out that sometimes these lights are “almost as bright as the Aurora Borealis.” What a handy signal to alien races that they should have nothing to do with us.