My daughter came home from 3rd grade class last night with a homework assignment that had a brief paragraph about the Great Wall of China and a few simple questions. One of the questions was, “Why do you think the Great Wall is visible from the moon?” I told her to write, “It isn’t” and showed her a quote from Alan Bean, an astronaut, about how you can’t see any man-made objects on Earth from the moon.
Why do these myths get into our educational system?
I remember hearing that it was the only man-made object that was visible from space, which is quite a different thing, and even that isn’t true.
Because it’s taking longer than we thought.
You could print this picture and then ask your daughter’s teacher to point out the Great Wall.
even the Chinese admit this now.
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/03/12/world/great_wall040312
Can you see pollution from space?
Yes. Toronto, or any large sity, looks like mould. 
Yes. Choose “Pollution” from the “Available Views” selection box and click Start Search.
So you can see something man made from space.
Yes but
(a) it’s not “only” the GWOC
and
(b) it’s not from the Moon, but from geosynch-or-lower orbit (1/10th to 1/250th the distance)
Maybe her teacher got the idea from The Truman Show, which states (with graphic) the “fact” t hat the Truman sphere is the only man made object, besides the Great Wall of China, that can be seen in space.
Wouldn’t Khafre’s pyramid be more visible? I realize that neither would be from as far as the moon, but I think you would lose the wall before the pyramid as you moved out…
WAY longer.
So, CookingWithGas, what happened at school today? What did the teacher say when your daughter told her that nothing man-made was visible from the Moon?
!
But the moon is visible from the GWoC, so surely …
Even if it were true, the question still doesn’t make much sense. Why is it visible? Why? How are you supposed to answer that? Worse, “why do you think”, as if it were a matter of opinion?
If it were true, the “why” would be that we have a better ability to see small, stringy objects than smaller, boxy objects of the same width, so in certain situations we might be able to see a 10 meter wide road that stretches for miles but not be able to see a 30 meter square house (numbers taken out of my posterior.)
These numbers smell like ass.
