According to a long-standing urban myth, the Great Wall of China can be seen from the surface of the moon.
The idea was firmly debunked by astronaut Michael Collins in his 1988 book Liftoff. How he even determined this is a little puzzling to me.
Collins, after all, remained in lunar orbit while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the moon on July 21, 1969. I assume that when they clambered back into the lunar module after several hours of hopping about and getting abrasive moon dust into every possible crevice of their boots, the last thing they wanted to discuss was the moon itself.
So perhaps polite conversation drifted elsewhere.
“It’s bull dust, mate,” one of them might have said. “The wall’s too narrow and follows the natural contours of the land.”
“You can’t even see Donald Trump’s wall from outer space — no matter how many carrots you eat.”
That’s another urban myth, by the way.
During World War II, British propaganda encouraged people to believe that eating carrots improved night vision. While carrots are high in vitamin A, which is good for eye health, they don’t actually give you the ability to spot enemy bombers in the dark.
The real aim was more practical: get people growing carrots so they relied less on rationed foods. German aircraft, it turned out, were better detected by radar than by particularly alert carrot-fuelled eyeballs.
If we refocus on the moon, though, things get more interesting.
When I was a kid, we were told about the Man in the Moon, who we were assured was made of cheese. Armstrong and Aldrin shot that one down pretty quickly.
But one lunar myth remains intact — and it’s a proper myth, thousands of years old.
It’s the Chinese legend of the White Rabbit.
I’ve always liked the irony. Although we’re told we can’t see the Great Wall of China from the moon, people in China can apparently see a tiny white rabbit on the moon.
According to folklore, the rabbit lives on the lunar surface, pounding herbs with a mortar and pestle as it prepares the elixir of immortality.
I can’t see it myself. If I squint really hard, all I can make out are Neil Armstrong’s footprints in the Sea of Tranquillity.
Still, other Asian cultures have their own versions of the myth, so perhaps there really are rabbits up there after all.
And if any eyesight is good enough to spot the Great Wall of China from the moon, surely it belongs to a moon rabbit raised on carrots.
JOHN MARTIN 