A report has tried to debunk as a myth the claim that the Great Wall of China and the pyramids of Egypt are the only man-made structures visible from space.
The report by El Adelantado instead claimed that vegetable greenhouses in the southern Spanish town of El Ejido are visible from outside Earth, based on satellite images released by the NASA Earth Observatory, a publicly accessible online publication of the United States space agency.
“Even Pedro Duque, Spanish astronaut and former Minister of Science for his country, confirmed during a 2007 interview that he could see the greenhouses from the International Space Station,” El Adelantado reports.
However, the article also says that “the modern agricultural marvel stands out not because of its height or age, but because it gleams.” This suggests that sunlight reflected by the plastic roofs of the greenhouses—spread over 40,000 hectares—is the only thing visible, and not the structures themselves, where tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and melons are grown for export to different European countries.
Viewed closer, like through a drone camera, El Ejido’s “sea of plastic” is spectacular, as it looks like a futuristic landscape.
Meanwhile, another spectacle that is certainly not visible from space—or even from land—are the more than 2.6 million living eggs near an underwater volcano off the west coast of Canada.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada researcher Cherisse Du Preez told USA Today that the volcano and eggs were discovered during a dive there in 2023.
The giant golden eggs belong to the stingray-like Pacific white skate, which can live about two miles underwater.
Preez said the skates choose to lay their eggs on the vents to help with incubation.
For the curious or eager beavers who want to see the spectacle, they need not rush. They have all the time to dive in the area, as the golden eggs take 10 years to incubate, according to USA Today.