Earth from space Lesson 13 of the myths course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: the lesson at school .
0 Mr Hughes taps the board, very sure: "The Great Wall of China is the ONLY man-made thing you can see from space!" It's in quiz books, it sounds grand, and it began before anyone had even been to space. 2 The Wall is long but narrow and the same colour as the land around it, and astronauts, even China's first astronaut Yang Liwei, said they couldn't pick it out with their eyes; city lights at night are far easier. 3 Space myths grow from what things look like: astronauts float, so "there's no gravity up there"; it's warm in summer, so "we must be closer to the Sun"; the Sun crosses the sky, so "it goes round us". 4 The real reasons are better: astronauts float because they and their station are falling round the Earth together, seasons come from the Earth's tilt, and the Sun seems to move because the Earth spins. 5 The sharpest argument is often a question: if summer came from being close to the Sun, why is it summer in Australia at Christmas? 6 The Great Wall of China is long but narrow and land-coloured; astronauts say it is practically impossible to see with bare eyes from orbit, while cities at night are easy to see. 7 Gravity at the International Space Station is about 90% as strong as on the ground; astronauts float because they are falling around the Earth together with their station; anything falling freely acts weightless, so water even stops pouring from holes in a dropped cup. 8 A person in space without a suit would not explode; they would lose consciousness in about 15 seconds and need rescue within a minute or two, so it is deadly but not an explosion. 9 The Earth is not a perfect ball: it is about 43 kilometres wider across the equator than from pole to pole. 10 Seasons come from the Earth's tilt: in summer your half leans towards the Sun, so sunlight hits more directly and days are longer; the Earth is closest to the Sun in early January. 11 The hottest temperatures ever recorded are in deserts away from the equator, such as Death Valley; equator rainforests are hot but cloudy and rainy. 12 The Sun's light is basically white; our air scatters blue light, so the Sun looks yellowish, and red at sunset; from space it looks white. 13 The Moon is often visible in the daytime sky, depending on its phase. 14 Space is almost empty, so sound cannot travel through it; space is silent, and the explosion noises in films are made up. 15 The Earth goes round the Sun once a year and spins once a day, which makes the Sun seem to move across the sky; Copernicus and Galileo argued for this centuries ago. 16 Some claims that sound like myths are true, like silent space, so check before you argue. ← previous Cats, dogs and animal 'facts' at homenext → The Moon, the planets and the stars↑ back to Myths This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/13-earth-from-space/