Talk:1921: The Moon and the Great Wall

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 03:30, 30 November 2017 by 162.158.79.227 (talk)
Jump to: navigation, search

https://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/workinginspace/great_wall.html

gives something like an authoritative explanation togeter with photos taken from the ISS.

Summary: the great wall can't really be seen from space. But you may be able to spot its shape if the conditions are right. Such as light from the right direction (see the shadow), or snow accumulating on one side of the wall but not the other.

Jyrki Lahtonen


"The statement in the comic, however, is actually true." - It might be, but the part about the Great Wall in it is somewhat irrelevant - it is equally true also from anywhere else in the world. 162.158.210.88 09:49, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Yeah it's simply a reversal of the myth. "The Great Wall of China" could be replaced with "anywhere on Earth". But that would be less funny. Jdluk (talk) 10:27, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

The Great Wall is 13,000+ miles long, but only 35 feet wide. It's the narrowness that make it impossible to see from space. If we use thread (approx 1/100th of an inch wide) as an analogue, the GWC can be represent by a piece of thread 732 ft long (1.5 inches equals one mile), viewed from 5.5 feet away (equivalent to the 100 miles "edge of space"), or 1222 ft (22,000 miles geosynchronious orbit) or 2.5 miles (238,855 miles orbit of the moon) JamesCurran (talk) 15:07, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

732 feet long viewed from 5.5 feet away doesn't sound credible. And the "edge of space" is 100 kilometres up, not 100 miles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line 198.41.238.40 03:50, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
What part of that don't you find credible? Are you questioning my math? And I guess, the definition of "Edge of Space" has been revised since I first did the calculations when I was in college. JamesCurran (talk) 17:26, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
"The wall is a maximum 9.1 m (29 ft 10 in) wide ... The apparent width of the Great Wall from the Moon is the same as that of a human hair viewed from 3 km (2 mi) away." - Wikipedia. 198.41.238.40 03:59, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

That's simply false. The Great Wall of China is another structure on the surface of a celestial body that can be seen with the naked eye from the Great Wall of China. --172.68.54.34 19:05, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

definition of celestial body: "A natural object which is located OUTSIDE OF EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE, such as the Moon, the Sun, an asteroid, planet, or star."

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/celestial_body http://www.dictionary.com/browse/celestial?s=t 172.68.65.168 21:04, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

As opposed to terrestrial body, which is, well, the earth XD 172.68.2.22
Actually, there are four terrestrial bodies in our solar system alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_planet https://www.space.com/17028-terrestrial-planets.html 141.101.104.239 15:27, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
Could be possibly correct if they were referring to the Celestial Empire (China). Can't tell with mixed case. Probably unlikely.162.158.79.227 03:30, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Those merlons are way too small. They are not going to protect Megan & Ponytail from incoming arrows. --172.68.54.34 19:08, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Depends how high the wall is... Perhaps in order to reach the top of the wall archers might need to be so close that the merlons are actually sufficient. NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:19, 28 November 2017 (UTC)