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Chinese wall

Man-made objects visible from the moon

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Most people believe that the only man-made object visible from the moon is the Chinese wall. As usual, most people are wrong. The Chinese wall might be long, but it's certainly not significantly wide. If it were visible (and it isn't), then certainly a lot of canals, highways and dikes would be too. So please, ignore that urban myth for once and for all because it's simply that: a myth.

So are any man-made objects visible from space? The palms in Dubai might be a good candidate. If you know where to look, both the Jebel Ali and Jumeira Palm islands appear as tiny pixels in Google Earth as soon as your zoom level takes you somewhere between 3000 and 4000 kilometers of eye altitude. That's still a long distance away from our definition of where space begins (I believe 62km is the norm), but so far it's the best we got. Or is it?

I'm willing to argue that we, the Dutch, can actually claim to have made the most visible object: Flevoland. Google Earth is not very useful here because surrounding land blur the distant images into one colour, but again: if you do know it's there, you can easily see it stretches more than a single pixel from the same distance. And it would have to, because this man-made island is probably the biggest artificial object mankind has ever made: dikes, mills and pumps have reclaimed over 1400 square kilometers of land. With a population of over 300.000, the island is not just a fun housing project, but an entire province. And even if it isn't visible from space: it's home to Lowlands festival and therefore worthy to be mentioned.

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