
4,000-year-old termite mounds found in Brazil are visible from space - wglb
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-11/cp-4tm111318.php
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tokenadult
"The mounds, which are easily visible on Google Earth, are not nests."

This sentence from the article kindly submitted here ignores that Google Earth
imagery includes imagery taken from airplanes as well as from satellites.
Statements that such-and-such an object (a classic example is the Great Wall
of China) is visible from space, or from the Moon, go back to eras long before
human space flight. Most such statements are wrong.

As other comments previous to mine have noted, various specialized imaging
devices in satellites (or on airplanes) can have a higher resolution than
human-eye vision. But the headline "are visible from space" is surely an
exaggeration. Space flight has been going on since 1960s, but there has been
no report of the termite mounds till now, it appears.

~~~
notable_user
Most things outdoors are visible from space with a high enough resolution/zoom
camera. I’ve always thought the statement “viable from space” was closer to
meaningless rather than exaggerated.

“Visible from space with the naked eye” would be more meaningful but rarely is
that claim made.

~~~
Retric
In this case it’s more visible on google Maps, which was actually taken from
space vs high resolution aerial photos.

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raattgift
A video overview:

"... two hundred million of these mounds covering an area similar to the UK.
This means that 10 km^3 (about 4000 great pyramids of Giza) of soil have been
excavated, making this the greatest known example of ecosystem engineering by
an insect..."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXlS48mptbM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXlS48mptbM)

And the paper:

[https://www.cell.com/current-
biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)...](https://www.cell.com/current-
biology/fulltext/S0960-9822\(18\)31287-9)

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cbkeller
Geologist here. This reminds me of the previous story about massive
paleoburrows (also in Brazil) that are thought to have been dug by extinct
giant ground sloths [1,2].

The geological background for both of these stories seems to be that certain
types of iron-rich soils ("cangas") found in South America have been found to
erode extraordinarily slowly [3], in part because the iron oxides
recrystallize to form a hard surface known as a duricrust [4]. This slow
erosion combined with deep chemical weathering leads to old, thick soils that
can hold a lot of ancient surprises.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18236249](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18236249)

[2]
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2017/03/28/paleoburro...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2017/03/28/paleoburrows-
south-america/)

[3]
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X1...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X1200101X)

[4]
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001670371...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703714000805)

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Exorus18
> The amount of soil excavated is over 10 cubic kilometers, equivalent to
> 4,000 great pyramids of Giza ...

> he mounds are extremely old--up to 4,000 years

Soo they can build 1 Pyramid of Giza per year ? :D

~~~
dmos62
Maybe faster. Their "building" capacity might have been growing with time.

~~~
beached_whale
I feel like this could be the prelude to a high school math question on
exponential growth.

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Namari
"visible from space", still waiting from the picture from Space. I can smell
the bullshit or the google map picture highly zoomed... but if they can zoom
on your house they can zoom on those too, no need add this in the title.

~~~
pieterjands
here you go:
[https://www.google.be/maps/place/12%C2%B036'17.1%22S+40%C2%B...](https://www.google.be/maps/place/12%C2%B036'17.1%22S+40%C2%B059'50.6%22W/@-12.6047448,-40.9995787,935m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d-12.60475!4d-40.99739)

edit: you can find the coordinates in the xlsx file they attached to the
paper:
[https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cub.2018.09.061/attachmen...](https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cub.2018.09.061/attachment/ea8ff799-cee4-4870-a166-33db96a248bc/mmc2.xlsx)

~~~
oh_sigh
If you click on the post office of the closest town and look at the images,
the town looks nice and clean, but there is literally not a human soul to be
found. What's going on there?
[https://www.google.be/maps/place/Ubiraita/@-12.589317,-41.00...](https://www.google.be/maps/place/Ubiraita/@-12.589317,-41.0099978,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sAF1QipOgVbGgspsBG2DHY7gURDvXLJRzkodcDJyTSnRe!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOgVbGgspsBG2DHY7gURDvXLJRzkodcDJyTSnRe%3Dw152-h86-k-no!7i2560!8i1440!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x0:0x0!2zMTLCsDM2JzE3LjEiUyA0MMKwNTknNTAuNiJX!3b1!8m2!3d-12.60475!4d-40.99739!3m4!1s0x76a0bb2bbbe0df5:0xa08afc30a5ca7190!8m2!3d-12.5893161!4d-41.0099968)

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nakedrobot2
a reddit user accurately commented something along the lines that "even my
penis can be seen from space", so this whole "can be seen from space!!!!1"
meme is really bit ridiculous.

a quick googling tells me that the highest resolution for satellite imagery is
around 40 cm (16 inches). So yes, lots of things are visible from space,
including puddles, dogs, small bushes, etc.

~~~
burntsushi
I had always interpreted the meaning of the phrase to be "visible by the naked
eye from someone in close orbit in space." Was that ever a good interpretation
even though now it is perhaps not?

~~~
enriquto
> I had always interpreted the meaning of the phrase to be "visible by the
> naked eye from someone in close orbit in space."

These termite mounds are certainly not visible by the naked eye, even from a
plane.

I'd say that "visible from space" means visible by a current earth observation
satellite, which is very far from the naked eye. The worldview satellites that
take these images are huge telescopes pointing downwards.

~~~
nurettin
First time I heard it was in a documentary back in the 80s and the phrase was
referring to the great wall of china.

With the allowed legal resolution being 0.25 meters and spy satellites
certainly having better accuracy, the phrase will soon be obsolete and cease
to amaze anyone.

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hownottowrite
Actual study posted 2 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18493704](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18493704)

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chiefalchemist
"The termites' activities over thousands of years has resulted in huge
quantities of soil deposited in approximately 200 million cone-shaped mounds,
each about 2.5 meters tall and 9 meters across."

200 million mounds!?!? Over an area the size of Great Britain?

Can anyone take a stab at how many termites and/or termite hours it took to
make this happen?

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tryonqc
Everytime I read something about termites I can't stop thinking about Arthur
C. Clarke's short story "Retreat from Earth".

Awesome short story, go read it. (or listen to it on youtube, but the mouth
sound the narrator makes are awful imo)

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ryanmercer
Everything is visible from space with a large enough lens...

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dang
Also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18504253](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18504253)

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lawlessone
It's a bug planet

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nopacience
If you have the tools for it, theorically everything is visible from space.

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latchkey
Doesn't that just mean the space cameras are getting better?

~~~
Gys
> The mounds, which are easily visible on Google Earth

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everyone
Most (if not all) google maps 'satellite view' stuff is aerial photos stitched
together. So - visible from a plane.

~~~
everyone
Also these aerial photos were available before the internet. Eg. in Ireland
you had to buy them from OSI (Ordinance Survey Ireland) Google simply
collected them all for every region and stitched them all together, and also
made them free! Which is quite handy.

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mygo
None of the 3 attached images show how it looks from space.

