We all knew how gigantic the Great Wall of China is, the entire wall with all of its branches measures out to be some 13,171 miles. So, there are many misconceptions and myths about the wall that it’s the only man-made thing visible from space. A 1932 Ripley’s Believe It or Not! cartoon claimed that the Great Wall of China is “the mightiest work of man, the only one that would be visible to the human eye from the moon.”
Even, Neil Armstrong was repeatedly asked this question in 1969, when he returned from the moon. And he answered that ‘he saw continents, lakes, and splotches of white on blue. But he could not make out any man-made structures from the lunar surface, which averages a distance of 230,000 miles (370,000 kilometers) from Earth’ relayed in a recent NASA Johnson Space Centre oral history.
For the Chinese, The Wall’s visibility from space is a great matter of pride, but When “taikonaut” Yang Liwei, China’s first man in space, returned from the 14-orbit Shenzhou 5 mission in 2003, he admitted in front of everyone that he wasn’t able to see the wall. After this, the Ministry of Education revised their school textbooks which were claiming the same.
Now, the main reason behind the wall’s invisibility from space is the Human’s eye. Our eyes are more sensitive to contrast, and the color of the wall is the same as the ground on either side of it, which makes it difficult to see the wall from the space. But, Some U.S. astronauts, notably Eugene Cernan and Ed Lu, have said they’ve seen the wall from low orbit. And it tends to show up only in certain lighting conditions. When the sun is low on the horizon, for example, the wall casts extended shadows that make it possible to see its shape.
By – Saksham Bhalla
MYTH DIARIES 