Manufactured landscapes

The Aachen health " factory"

2009-06-08T10:14:00.000-07:00

The Aachen health "factory":
One of the weirdest looking buildings in Europe could easily be the large hospital of Aachen. The Klinikum Aachen, full German name "Universitätsklinikum Aachen" (University Hospital Aachen), abbreviated UKA, formerly known as "Neues Klinikum", is the largest hospital of europe located in Aachen in Germany. It is part of the University of Aachen and contains its whole medical faculty. Seen from far away, for many visitors the Klinikum Aachen looks like a giant power plant rather than a hospital.

This is due to the huge striped ventilation pipes that are attached to the outer walls and the 24 " towers" that protrude above the main building:

The University Hospital Aachen (UKA) combines in its singularity all mechanisms of supplying the patient, the entire medical faculty and the dentistry under one roof. In this enormous building is a place for the common research of engineers, scientists and physicians. At the moment co-operate 59 professors, 824 scientific assistants and 4347 non-scientific employees in 33 clinical departments, 21 institutes and in the administration of the UKA. The University Hospital has 1.510 beds. The industrial design of the building is not only visible from the outside but also the interior of the building is very industrial looking:

This building was designed as a health factory, the product enters the "factory" sick and leaves it healthy.

Largest ammunition storage sites in the world.

2009-05-22T02:26:00.000-07:00

The largest ammunition storage sites in the world:
The Hawthorne Army Depot is said to be the largest ammunition storage site in the world. It is located near the town of Hawthorne in western Nevada in the United States. The depot covers an area of 15 kilometers by 15 kilometers (595 km²), and has 600,000 square feet (55,700 m²) of floor space in 2,427 storage bunkers. The Hawthorne Army Depot stores reserve munitions to be used after the first 30 days of a major conflict:

In terms of storage capacity the ammunition storage site at the village of Haywood in Oklahoma in the U.S seems to be the largest in the world. It covers an area of 12 kilometers by 12 kilometers, and was built because of the involvement of America in World War II:

At the turn of the twenty-first century the plant employed more than eight hundred people. Among the largest ammo storage sites in the world is also the Ammunition storage site at Tooele, located in Utah. It covers an area of 8 kilometers by 7 kilometers:

Huge dam spillways

2009-05-16T02:57:00.000-07:00

Huge dam spillways:
I already discussed the biggest dam spillway in the world on this blog ( The spillway of the Robert Bourassa dam in canada ). These dam spillways are generally used to release the water from the water bassins behind a dam in case of a flood. These things are most of the time build in the construction of the dam itself like for example in the Itaipu dam in Paraguay which is one the biggest spillways ( 500 meters long and 350 meters wide) in the world in terms of water capacity. When water is released from this thing it makes a hell of a noise:

The biggest kind of spillways however can be found at earthfilled dams situated next to the dam instead in the structure of the dam itself. Like for example this huge spillway at the W.A.C Bennet dam in Canada:

It is 800 meters long and about 35 meters wide. Another huge one is this one at the Garrison Dam in North Dakota in the U.S. It is part of one of the world's largest earth filled dams which forms the Sakakawea Reservoir on the Missouri River. The spillway itself is 800 meters long and is almost 350 meters wide at the point where the water enters the spillway:

The most impressive and biggest concrete spillway in the world however is the spillway which is part of Fort Peck Lake dam in Montana in the U.S. The dam itself is the largest earth-filled dam in the world. The spillway is 1500 meters long and 150 meters wide:

Another earth filled dam ( which is also among the biggest earthfilled dams in the world) with impressive spillways is the Tarbela dam in Pakistan. This dam actually has 2 giant spillways. One of them has a lenght of 780 meters and a wide of 100 meters and the other one has a length of about 200 meters and a wide of 150 meters:

Another huge one is the spillway which is part of the Nagarjuna sagar dam in India. The spillway is build in the dam itself and is 500 meters wide:

And last but not least the giant dam spillway of the Ataturk dam in Turkey. This thing is 900 meters long and 150 meters wide:

Niagara falls tailrace tunnels

2009-05-09T04:06:00.000-07:00

The Niagara falls tailrace tunnels:
Almost everybody knows about the large Niagara water falls near the town of Niagara falls on the border of Canada and the United States. But I think fewer know that there are large underground tailrace tunnels in this area which are part of the hydro electric power stations located near the waterfalls. Two of these hydro electric power station which used these large tailrace tunnels are the William B. Rankin power station and the Toronto power company generating station. Both are now out of use and were explored by an urban explorer from Canada. He has his own site where the pictures seen below are from.

The William B. Rankin power station starts here collecting the water. The water then runs trough a 2200 feet long tailrace tunnel seen in the pictures below. The turbines used to generate the electricity can be seen at the top of the tunnel:

The whole tunnel was filled with water in the past but now the power station is out of use so you are able to walk in it. The tunnel ends at a very spectacular spot below the famous horsshoe waterfall:

The Toronto power generating station (seen in the picture below ) also uses these large underground tunnels. You can see this power station in the picture below. It is clearly visible that the power station haven't been used for a long time ( for 30 years):

The tunnels of this power station are located much deeper underground as those of the William B. rankin power station and this tailrace excists of multiple tunnels instead of 1 tunnel. The tunnels are located more then ten storeys underground and are completely made of brick and are a hundred years old. The tunnels are only accessible by descending through a narrow slit in its ceiling thirty feet above the floor. But when you get down there you certainly get to a spectacular site:

In the picture below you can see the end of a trailrace line of this power station. The water flow would have crashed downward through the openings in the floor into the penstocks that made good use on the water's gravitational potential energy, driving it down to the base of the gorge where it spun great turbines at the Ontario Generating Station:

The tallest dams

2009-05-08T08:41:00.000-07:00

The tallest dams:
When you are talking about the tallest dams in the world the Nurek dam near Nurex in Tadzjikistan takes the price for the heighest dam in the world. It has a height of 300 meters. It is seen very good in google earth with the terrain elevation layer turned on:

The water behind the dam is called the Vodohranili water bassin. The impact this dam made on this water bassin can be clearly seen at the surrounding landscape:

The lighter colored strips of shoreline in the picture above highlight the tidal water level caused by the Nurek dam. The price of the second tallest dam in the world would go to the Grand dixense dam in Switzerland. This dam has a height of 285 meters. Just click on the picture below and enlarge it to see how big this structure is when you are standing at the bottom.

The third tallest dam is the Inguri dam in Georgia with a height of 272 meters:

At the water bassin behind the Inguri dam the same " tidal" stripes can be seen at the surrounding hills as at the water bassin behind the Nurek dam:

The fourth highest dam has a relatively small wide compared to the dams mentioned above but when measured by height it is still 262 meters tall. This dam is located in Italy and is called the Vaiont dam. As you can see in the picture below the dam also has a cool walkway in front it from where you can see the dazzling height of the dam itself:

The fifth highest dam in the world with a height of 261 meters is the Tehri dam near the town of Tehri in India. This dam also has a very big spillway running next to it:

This dam is primary used as a hydro electric power plant. When it was still under construction the huge turbines that are used to generate the electricity where visible:

The new valley project

2009-04-18T01:04:00.000-07:00

The new valley project:
The New Valley Project in southern Egypt is one of the biggest irrigation projects ever constructed. It consists of a system of canals to carry water from Lake Nasser to irrigate the sandy wastes of the Western Desert of Egypt, which is part of the Sahara Desert. The 310-km long Sheikh Zayed canal is the biggest canal of the project and should bring 25 million m3 of water per day into one of the most inhospitable desert on earth and create a new Nile delta. These canals are build in the middle of this desert in the hot sun. First, the channels are dug in the middle of the desert sand:

After that the first layer of concrete is poured on it:

After this layer another layer of conrete is poured on it but first they attach layers of plastic foils in between so they don't lose any water:

Of course these channels have to be filled with water. This is where the flagship of this project comes in action. I'm talking about the Mubarak Pumping Station which is described as a venture which "has expanded the boundaries of civil engineering. It is pumping water from from Lake Nasser into the channels. It has a discharge capacity of 1.2 million m³/hr making it the largest water pump in the world. Its innovative design places the pump-house like an island in a lake - completely surrounded by water with 24 vertical pumps arranged in two parallel lines along both sides. You can see how large this pump is when it was under construction and not filled with water around it yet:

When the water was filled around it it looks like this: (The structure itself is continuing 50 meters under water):

When this thing has done it's job the channels are filled with water making agriculture in the middle of one of the most inhospitable deserts on earth possible:

The stairway to heaven

2009-04-12T13:44:00.000-07:00

The stairway to heaven
The Chinese call the stairway you see in the two pictures below "the heaven reaching ladder". It must be one of the most impressive external staircases in the world:

The staircase is part of the Tianmen Mountain (which is only 8 kilometers away from downtown Zhangjiajie), and leads to the Tianmen cave which offers a great view over the nearby mountains and is a religious site for praying for happiness. This open cave is already visible from far away:

There are altogether exactly nine hundred and ninety-nine steps in this staircase. This Tianment cave is a natural water-eroded cave with the highest elevation in the world. The open cave runs south-northward and has a height of 131.5 meters, a width of 57 meters and a depth of 60 meters. It’s much like a gate towards the heaven. In 1999 a bunch of pilots flied their jets trough this cave. This event was watched by 800 million people on tv. And in 2006 the Russian Air force did the same (the picture seen below is not photoshopped):

By the way not only this staircase and cave are impressive also the road leading to this place is fascinating. This road is called the Tongtian Avenue (Avenue toward Heaven) and it has 99 turns symbolizing that the heaven has nine palaces:
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Cool exterior elevators

2009-04-12T11:20:00.001-07:00

Cool exterior elevators:
The Bailong Elevator is the world’s largest exterior elevator built onto the side of a huge cliff in Zhangjiajie in China. At over 330 meters tall, this elevator looms high midway up a cliff overlooking a valley far below. Moreover, the elevator is mostly glass, affording passengers a dizzying view to the depths below:

The Hammetschwand Lift is the highest exterior elevator of Europe and is located in Switzerland. It brings you 156 meters in the air from a spectacular rock path to the lookout point Hammetschwand on the Bürgenstock plateau overlooking Lake Lucerne:

These kind of exterior lift are sometimes also integrated in buildings like here in the Lacerda building in the city of Salvador in Brazil:

This thing takes you up 72 meters, and at the top you have a great view over the nearby bay.

Deforestation of the Amazon rainforests

2009-04-11T11:38:00.000-07:00

Deforestation of the Amazon rainforests:
There is no such species rich rainforest on the earth as the Amazon rainforest in northern South America, but there is also no rainforest where the deforestation is so massive and also so well visible from satellite images. The jungle here is typically cleared to provide pasture for cattle, then soy farmers move in later, and after the soy is not profitable anymore they cultivate their crops. In all the state that are part of the Amazone forest the deforestation is best visible in the state of Mato Grosso in Brazil. 48 percent of Amazon deforestation that took place last years occurred in Mato Grosso. Take for example this satellite image from google earth:

In 1992 this was one big forest, but now you see that the dark green color of the wood is largely taken over by agriculture. This is also the case in the state of Rondonia in Brazil. About 50 percent of the Amazon forest is felled here during the past 20 years:

The States of Amazonas and Para that cover most of the amazon forest are still largely covered by forest. But also here are large-scale logging projects going on. This happens usually along a main road from where the rain forest continues to be cut away. This creates an elongated form as you can see in the picture below in the state of Para:

In the picture below you can see this deforestation process in an earlier state in the Amazone state of Brazil:

In eastern Bolivia this deforestation is also done in some sort of agriculture circular crops to get the most efficient possible format for the farmers:

Not only humans are responsible for the deforestation of the Amazone forest. Often large forest fires occure. The most notable was the "Great Fire" that occurred in Roraima in 1998 and whose scars are still visible in the landscape:

The area in the picture above measures about 70 km by 120 km. This natural process is ,contrary to human logging, of course not damaging for the forest in the long term. If the human deforestation of this forest goes on in the same rate as now the Amazone rain forest will be 85% gone in the next 100 years. This could cause much more extreme weather on the planet and would contribute to the global warming. And maybe even more worse the loss of countless species and potential drugs against various diseases.

Largest cooling towers

2009-04-11T02:30:00.001-07:00

Largest cooling towers:
Cooling towers are heat removal devices used to transfer process waste heat to the atmosphere. These cooling towers are found at really big dimensions at most power plants. The primary use of large, industrial cooling towers is to remove the heat absorbed in the circulating cooling water systems used in power plants. These things have to be so big to be able to cool the water in a constant rate. If these things are not used you need an enormeous amount of cooling canals which for example can be seen at the Turkey point power plant in Florida.

The world's tallest cooling tower is the 200 meter tall cooling tower of Niederaussem Power Station in Germany. The skyline of the villages nearby are all dominated by this thing:

The cooling towers of the Belleville nuclear power plant in Billeville sur Loire in France are also giants. These cooling towers are 150 meters in diameter at the base, and are about 170 meters high:

These things were climbed by Greenpeace activists in 2007 as you can see in the pictures below. This way you can easily estimate how big these structures are:

Even the open structure at the base is taller then you would think:

Other huge cooling towers can be seen (not yet visible in google maps) at the new expansion of the Neurath Power station in Germany which was recently completed. The 2 cooling towers here are each 170 meters tall:

The cooling towers during construction:

The "elephant cages"

2009-04-10T02:16:00.000-07:00

The "elephant cages":

Elephant cages are what they called or in normal terms the Wullenwebers or the FLR-9 antennas (the original name introduced by Dr. Hans Rindfleisch was Wullenwever). I talk about the circularly disposed antenna arrays built by the United States during the 1960s. These are large circular antenna arrays used by the military to triangulate radio signals for radio navigation, intelligence gathering and search and rescues. Because of the immense sizes (370 meters in diameter and 40 meters high) and huge circular reflecting screens, the antennas are colloquially known as the elephant cages. In total there are 8 of these huge FLR-9 antennas build, spread over the world. They were constructed at:

-Augsburg, Germany. This one is not in use anymore:

-Chicksands, United Kingdom ( not in use anymore):

-Clark AFB, Philippines. As you can see in the picture below this elephant cage has been converted to a 35,000-seat fabric-covered amphitheatre:

-Elmendorf AFB, Alaska. This one is still operational:

- Karamursel, Turkey. This one is already overgrown by vegetation and is the least visible one. It looked identical as the other ones.

- Misawa, Japan. This antenna is still active also:

-Ramasun, Thailand (This one is not visible in google maps in highress).

-San Vito dei Normanni, Italy:

As you can see in the pictures above all of these antennas excist of two major rings of HF antennaes. The outer ring is for monitoring shorter HF wavelengths and is is about 370 meters in diameter and contains some 120 sleeve monopoles. The inner ring is for monitoring Longer wavelength signals, and is typically some 100 meters in diameter with some containing 40 folded dipoles. A horizontal ground screen about 400 meters in diameter surrounds the entire site. The station's intercept operators work in an operations building in the center of the array.

The biggest "slide" in the world

2009-04-09T11:11:00.000-07:00

The biggest "slide" in the world:
Dam spillways are used to release water in case of a flood, but sometimes these spillways are also used as a slide for kayakers and even bikes. This is the case with Europe's largest dam spillway which is part of the LIyn Brianne dam in Wales:

This concrete monster the size of a main road plunges more than 330 meters to the valley below. It makes one of those terrifying Olympic ski jumps look like a speed bump. Standing on the public walkway at the top, looking down, is mesmerising and slightly nauseating. The water goes from looking-glass calm, over a lip, on to a shelf and then crashes down the slope, forming a beautiful foaming latticework all the way down:

It cannot be overstated that it is madness to contemplate any sort of trip down Llyn Brianne, but still it is used by kayakers (and even bikers).

These kayakers take the risk of being forced under water and thrown around like a pair of socks in a washing machine. Let's say it not a thing you want to plan for a vacation holiday.

The steps of a giant

2009-04-08T11:18:00.000-07:00

The steps of a giant:
The structure you can see in the pictures below is what they call the steps of a giant:

If you look at the pictures above that is a well chosen name if you believe in fairy tales. But in reality this is a man made spillway used to release water from the giant Robert-Bourassa dam in case of a flood. This giant Robert Bourassa dam can be seen at the right in the picture below ( the spillway is seen at the left side of the dam):

The spillway is almost 2 kilometers long and 150 meters wide and each step you see is 10 meters high. It is located in Quebec in Canada. Except during flood periods, water does not normally flow over this spillway. When there is a flood the gates, which can be seen at the top of the spillway in the picture below, can be opened and so the water can flow away very fast:

This way it protects other hydroelectric dams down the river and some towns along this river such as the small village of Radisson. The spillway and dam are part of the James Bay Project. This project refers to the construction of a series of hydroelectric power stations on the La Grande River in northwestern Québec, Canada. The project covers an area the size of the State of New York and is one of the largest hydroelectric systems in the world. The total project power plants has an installed generating capacity of 16,000 megawatts.

The Los Angeles Aqueducts

2009-04-06T13:03:00.000-07:00

The Los Angeles Aqueducts:
Los Angeles has one of the most cool looking Aqueduct systems in the world. In the city itself the rivers flow through a concrete channel on a fixed course. This canal system forms one of Los Angeles most important city features and is wel known all over the world. There are 2 big river cannals running trough Los Angeles; the Los Angeles river, and the San Gabriel River. The Los Angeles river starts here, and runs as 1 river canal until this point (After this point it splits up in 2 canals). This river canal gives Los Angeles it's famous urban features:

In the dry season when no water is flowing trough the canal it becomes a recreation area:

The San Gabriel River is the other big river canal running trough Los Angeles. It starts here and runs in it it's concrete structure until here. This river canal is also the most spectacular one because at certain points it is almost 100 meters broad. This picture below was made after a winter storm. As you can see the water of this river is not very clean:

These rivers were the primary source of water of Los Angeles until the Los Angeles aqueducts were build. Although the Los Angeles region still gets some of its water from the river and other local sources, most comes from several aqueducts serving the area. The aqueducts deliver water from the Owens River in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains into the city of Los Angeles. Most of these aquaducts consists of pipe lines running hundreds of miles trough the landscape. From time to time these pipe lines have to deal with very high mountain hills. The most spectacular of these "syphons" is at Jawbone Canyon. In the picture below you can see the water running up a very steep hill in this Jawbone Canyon:

The end of the aqueduct is a familiar site for LA commuters. Here you can see the original "cascades" which sometimes has water running down from it. This was the original outflow from the aqueduct:

Cutler's VLF transmitters.

2009-04-05T11:06:00.000-07:00

The VLF Transmitter Cutler:
The VLF Transmitter Cutler is the United States Navy's very low frequency (VLF) station at Cutler, in Maine. The station provides one-way communication to the United States submarine forces. These VLF transmitters can reach submarines 40 meter under the water. Most of the time the submarines itself are further underwater but they use an antenna floating 40 meter under the sea level which is attached to the submarine. This VLF transmitter is the second largest radio transmitter on the planet. It has a transmission power of 1800 kW, making it to one of the most powerful VLF-transmitters in the world. It also is one of the world's largest consumers of electrical power. In the picture below you can see the huge antenna's:

The extensive antenna system consists of two completely separate arrays. Each array consists of six diamond shaped panels supported by 13 towers. The central tower of each antenna system is 304 m tall, which is almost as tall as the Eiffel tower. It is surrounded by six 266.7 m tall masts, placed on a ring with a radius of 556 m around the central tower. The remaining six towers of the array are 243.5 m tall and placed on a circle of 935.7 m around the central tower:

It is proven that people in the surrounding area of the antenna's have a higher chance of getting cancer. This is why a lot of people left the nearby town of Cutler. The people of the house seen in the picture below would for sure be in the danger zone:

The Troll A platform

2009-04-04T11:27:00.000-07:00

The Troll A platform:
The Troll A platform is a condeep offshore natural gas platform located ( not visible in google maps) in the Troll gas field 70 kilometers west of the city of Bergen in Norway. It is the tallest construction that has ever been moved to another position, relative to the surface of the Earth, and is among the largest and most complex engineering projects in history:

The Troll A platform has an overall height of 472 meters and weighs 656,000 tons. You may ask yourself how this thing can be 472 meters heigh as you look at the picture above. This is because the largest part of the giant structure is placed below sea level. The platform stands on the sea floor on 4 303 meters (994 feet) high concrete legs. In the pictures below you can see the structure when it was stilll above sea level and was being towed by tugs to it's final destination:

Here are some pictures of people standing at the bottom of such a concrete leg:

These people are standing more as 300 meters below sea level but the 1 meter concrete walls of the "legs"can handle this pressure. The structure was built by Norwegian Contractors for Norske Shell, and there are about 200-300 people working on this gas platform.

Cool cable cars

2009-04-04T02:19:00.000-07:00

Cool cable cars:
The cable car track towards the vacation island of Vinepearl near Nha Trang in Vietnam is the longest cable car to cross a sea in the world. It is 3310 meters long. The system excists of 9 pillars each with a height of about 55 meters measured from the orange foundation structures (seen in the pictures below) to the top. This foundation structure is 8 meters above sea level so you are basically hanging 63 meters above the sea:

From this ideal height, sitting in the cabinet, visitors can enjoy the panorama of pretty Nha Trang city embraced by meandering beaches and the paradise-like beauty of Nha Trang bay, one of the world’s most beautiful and famous bays:

The system can transport 1000-1500 people an hour in 60 cabins, each of which contains 8 people. A similair cable car is this one in Singapore. This thing brings people from the main land of Singapore towards the resort island of Santosa. The cable cars start at the harbour front tower:

They are hanging 85 meters above sea level offering a great view over the skyline and harbour of Singapore:

And what about the cable cars that are going to the Langkawi sky bridge on the island of Langkawi in Malaysia. This sky bridge is 800 meters above sea level:

To get there you first have to travel from the village to the middle station 700 meters up in the sky. You can see that station all the way up the mountain in the picture below:

And from there you have to go to the top station station where the sky bridge is located. If you are afraid of heights this is probably one the most stupid things you can do:

Probably the most scary cable car in the world is situated near the mountain of Aguille Di Midi in France. This thing is also officaly the heighest cable car in the world and is going to the summit of this mountain:

This thing is going ridiculously steep and brings you 2800 meters in the sky measuring from the start point in Chamonix to the end station ( seen in the pictures below):

The Angkor barays

2009-04-02T08:42:00.001-07:00

The Angkor reservoirs:
Angkor is an ancient city that served as the seat of the Khmer empire that flourished here from approximately the ninth century to the fifteenth century A.D. This was te largest pre industrial city in the world and it is still very good visble from satellite images. Nowadays only the temples and the contours of the city remain:

The temples of the Angkor area number over one thousand, ranging in scale from nondescript piles of brick to the magnificent Angkor Wat, said to be the world's largest single religious monument (seen in the picture below):

The remains of this city which are now the most prominent are especially the large barrays/ reservoirs on the west side and on the east side of the city.These barays have functioned as a vast holding tank for water that fed irrigation canals in dry times. Many later studies, however, theorize that the barays had mainly symbolic functions, serving as a vast earthly depiction of the Hindu Sea of Creation. No matter for what reason these barrays were created they are impressive for sure. The largest baray is the West Baray oriented east-west and located just west of the walled city Angkor Thom. It is Rectangular in shape and measuring approximately 8 by 2.1 kilometers:

Its waters were contained by tall earthen dikes. Today a part of this baray is still underwater. In the center of the baray is the West Mebon, a very small Hindu temple built on an artificial island.

The East baray is the second-largest baray in the Angkor region, measuring roughly 7,150 by 1,740 meters. The labor and organization necessary for its construction were staggering: Its dikes contain roughly 8 million cubic meters of fill. The East Baray today contains no water; farmers till crops on its bed. But its outlines remain clearly visible in satellite photographs:

In the middle of this baray is the East Mebon temple, located on elevated ground that was an island in the days when the baray contained water. There is also another large barray which is called the Preah Khan Baray which is 4 kilometers by 1 kilometer. This one also has a temple in the middle, which is called Neak Pean.

Giant radio telescopes

2009-04-02T03:30:00.001-07:00

Giant radio telescopes:
A radio telescope is a form of directional radio antenna used in radio astronomy and in tracking and collecting data from satellites and space probes. Radio telescopes are typically large parabolic ("dish") antenna used singularly or in an array formation. Radio observatories are located far from major centers of population in order to avoid electromagnetic interference (EMI) from radio, TV, radar, and other EMI emitting devices. When you are talking about a radio telescope observatory in an Array formation then the very large Array observatory (Check out the streetview also) in New Mexico in the U.S is the biggest in the world. In this place 27 independent antennas, each of which has a dish diameter of 25 meters and weighs 209 metric tonnes, are placed in an Y-shaped formation:

The largest individual radio telescope of any kind is the RATAN-600 located near Nizhny Arkhyz in Russia. It consists of a 576-meter circle of rectangular radio reflectors, each of which can be pointed towards a central conical receiver:

If you look at a single radio telescope the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is the biggest in the world. This thing has a diameter of 305 meters and was also featured in the James Bond movie Goldeneye:

That thing floating in the air is the reciever. It is located on a 900-ton platform which is suspended 150 m in the air above the dish by 18 cables running from three reinforced concrete towers, one of which is 110m high and the other two of which are 80 m high (the tops of the three towers are at the same elevation). Another very big single radio telescope is the Goldstone radio telescope not far from Barstow in California in the U.S. This thing has a diametre of 70 metres:

And what about the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia in the U.S. It has a diameter of 100 meters and is the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope and the world's largest land-based movable structure:

Looking down from it:

The largest radio telescope in Europe is the 100-meter diameter antenna in Effelsberg, Germany:

This was also was the world's largest fully-steerable telecope for 30 years until the slightly larger Green Bank Telescope mentioned above was opened in West Virginia, United States, in 2000.

The stepwells of India

2009-04-01T01:53:00.000-07:00

The stepwells of India:
The stepwells in India are some pretty amazing structures which cannot be found anywhere else in the world. Stepwells, are called bawdi or baoli in India and are basically wells in which the water can be reached by descending a set of steps. The biggest of such a structure, with a lot of these steps, is found near the town of Bandikui in India. This is a large touristic attraction and the most famous stepwell in the world. It look's like some sort of an Escher drawing:

In the picture below you can see some people standing in it so you can better estimate the size of the structure:

A stepwell which is widely considered as the most beautifull of India and which ones also was one the biggest in India is the Queens stepwell near the town of Patan. Not the whole structure is visible nowadays because much of it got silted up:

Also take a look at this section view to better visualize how it is structured:

Another big stepwell (similair to the one mentioned above) is found in the village of Adalaj. This thing is slightly less big as the one in Patan but it is in a better condition:

In my opinion the most beautifull stepwell is found here near the Modhera Sun temple near Modhera town. This stepwell is part of this temple complex and is one of the biggest in India:

As you can see in the picture below the temple itself is not as large as you might think:

There are of course a lot more of these stepwells in India, but the ones mentioned above are the biggest and most famous.

Living on the water

2009-03-31T01:58:00.000-07:00

Living on the water:
People all over the world like to live on the water. So they can have a boat in front of their house and have their own small "beach"in front . Urban planners have constructed whole cities and neighburhoods to fulfill this need. The most famous examples of such neighbourhoods are the manufactured palm islands in Dubai. In the pictures below you can see Palm Jumeirah:

All the houses here have their own "private" beach:

Al though it look's cool you need a lot of money to buy a house here because they coast 3 million dollars on average. And you don't have much privacy as you can see.

Another place where such "living on the water" neighbourhoods are very common is the State of Florida in the United States. This state attracts people from all over the U.S because of the sun and the water. So whole cities were build here to provide people the option to live on the water. The biggest of such a city in Florida with only this purpose is Cape Coral. Thousands of canals were created here so as many people as possible could have their house on the water and could have a boat in front of their house:

Also notice the many bay windows with the glas roofs in the picture below. Sun is what people brings to Cape Coral:

Cape coral might be the biggest of such a city in Florida the layout of the city itself is certainly no exception in Florida. These layouts are found everywhere along the coast of Florida (especially the West coast). Take for example the restricted community of Rotonda West. It has an diameter of 5km and is shaped like an incomplete wagon wheel. A closed, fresh-water canal system surrounds the outside of the "wheel" and travels inside each of the pie-shaped wedges forming the subdivisions of the development:

A protected wetland to the south prevents development of that area. Alligators, bald eagles, great blue herons, egrets, and many other birds and animals inhabit the area. So it is not very rare that you have an alligator in your swimmingpool here.

Other cool layouts like this in Florida are found here at Punta Gorda:

, here at Holiday:

And here at Marco island:

These city layouts are not always found at the coast but also further land inwards. Near Miami the layout you can see in the picture below can be found everywhere:

These city layouts can of course also be found in Europe and other places around the world but by far not in the scale as in Forida. Maybe only the canals of Amsterdam can be compared in size (now also visible in google street view). But these were more designed for commercial trade rather than to provide sun and water.

Floating fish farms

2009-03-30T11:21:00.000-07:00

Floating fish farms:
A floating sea fish farm is used to breed sea fish. These floating fish farms are especially common in Asia and they come together in large numbers mainly at the coasts of China and Japan. These Chinese floating fish farms consist of a floating raft with different "fish pens". Each of these rafts generally have their own house on it for the owner. In the pictures below you can see such typical Chinese fish farms:

When they are together in large numbers it look's like a floating village:

The biggest number of floating fish farms close together in the world are found not far from the city of Shantou in China. At this point these farms stretch for almost 12 kilometres. Thousands of such farms are floating in the water here:

Each of these fish farms you see in the pictures below are generally 30 by 30 metres but sometimes they are almost 250 metres long:

The chain of floating fish farms at this bay "begings" here and ends all the way here (12 kilometres further). The formations can sometimes be very chaotic, and there seems not to be really thought of a logical structure:

If you wonder how they reach these farms take a look here where you can see all the boats used to reach the farms. Another place i found where a lot of them float together is here (Not far from Xiamen):

This farming complex stretches for almost 5 kilometres. At the coasts of the fish eating country number one; Japan they also use these floating fish farms a lot. Al though they look different from the Chinese ones. They don't have the small houses on it and they generally use nets in Japan which are supported by floating circle-shaped or rectangular girders. Like you can see in this bay in Southern Japan:

Turkey point power plant

2009-03-30T01:52:00.000-07:00

Turkey Point power plant.
Turkey point nuclear power plant south of Miami in the U.S look's like an ordinairy nuclear plant when you first look at it:

But when you look "better" you can find a huge terrain south of the plant with a lot of canals. This terrain is 8km long and 4 km wide:

This is the largest cooling canal system in the world. The large area of cooling canals have been constructed at the Turkey Point power plant to cool the circulating water. A separate supply of water that cools the turbine steam supply for reuse comes from a unique system of 36 interconnected canals. The canals act like a giant radiator to cool the water in a two-day, 168-mile journey before it is circulated back to the condenser for reuse:

It also happens to be an habitat for the endangered North American Crocodile. As their numbers teetered on extinction, crocodiles found refuge in the warm, salty water of the cooling canals. Here the placid water, filled with turtles, fish and crabs, suits them.

LNG storage tanks

2009-03-28T15:43:00.001-07:00

LNG storage tanks:
LNG tanks are the biggest type of storage tanks in the world. LNG stands for liquid natural gas. These tanks are specially designed to maintain the -163 degrees celcius temperature to keep the natural gas liquid. The relatively high cost of production of LNG and the need to store it in expensive cryogenic tanks ( to maintain the low temperatures ) gives the need of big tanks ( larger then in the oil industry ) to minimize costs. LNG tanks are always of double-wall construction with extremely efficient insulation between the walls. Large tanks are low aspect ratio (height to width) and cylindrical in design with a domed roof. There are a lot of safety measures to these tanks because if it escapes from a storage tank or ship, it can quickly vaporize. If this vapor ignites, it can create an immense fireball that would incinerate everything in its path.

The biggest LNG storage tank in the world is situated on Elbas Island near Savannah in the U.S. Below you can see some pictures ( from live search maps birdview) during it's construction:

The world's largest LNG export terminal is called the Sakhalin II terminal and is situated on the Sakhalin island in the Russian Far East. The storage tanks on this project belong to the largests in the world and have a storage capacity of 1.2 mln barrels (190,000 m³ ), The picture below shows what a giant impact these structures have on the once peaceful beach of the village nearby:

Another large LNG terminal is the Bontang LNG Plant in Bontang in Indonesia. The 6 tanks on this site are all more then 80 metres in diameter:

And what about the liquefied natural gas storage tanks at the Yemen L.N.G project which was recently build near (not yet visible in google maps) Balhaf in Yemen. These storage tanks are aboslutely huge as you can see in the pictures below (Click to enlarge)

Here you can see a worker who walks through one of two main storage tanks:

Another large liquid gas storage tank was build in the Senboku LNG terminal II in the harbour of Osaka. This thing was build in 2000 and was the world's largest aboveground LNG storage tank for a long time. This thing is 60 metres high and has diameter of 80 metres.

To view the size of these LNG tanks even better you can enlarge the picture below by clicking on it. The people on top are dwarved by the huge tank. This thing stands here in the harbour of Guangdong in China:

Space launch sites

2009-03-28T05:26:00.000-07:00

Space launch sites:
There are not many spaceports around the world. Fewer than two dozen have been constructed during the Space Age. Over the decades since 1957, some 5,000 satellites have been boosted above the atmosphere from these sites. The space programs of the United States and Russia have been comparable in size and are by far the world's largest. They are followed in size by the space programs of the ESA, France, Japan, Germany, Italy, India, the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, Belgium and Spain.

The Baikonur space launch site, also known as Tyuratam ( A city in Kyzylorda Province of Kazakhstan rented and administered by Russia ), is the world's oldest and largest working space launch facility. The first man made satellite to orbit the Earth was launched from here. For decades, the facility was shrouded in secrecy with the Soviet authorities refusing to confirm its precise location.The site has a diameter of 90 km:

There are a number of big launch pads on this huge complex. Here is the biggest launch pad on the site. Another big one is found here. A huge movable service tower equipped with cargo and passenger elevators and a crane here, allowes access to the rocket in vertical position on the launch pad:

With so many years of launching missles and satellites into space the surrounding steppes are littered with spent boosters, many with toxic propellants still on board - although clean-up plans are underway. The second biggest space launch site is the The John F. Kennedy Space Center from NASA on Merritt Island, Brevard County, Florida, United States. It is 34 mi long and around 6 mi wide, covering 219 sqmi. The huge vehicle assembly building is the most well known landmark on the huge site. The 160m tall building is the largest one story building in the world and is still the tallest building in the United States outside an urban area:

The site has two very big launch pads and a lot of smaller launchpads. The biggest launch pad is found here ( Launch pad 39B):

And here launch pad 39 is situated. This 105 meters high structure can be seen from miles away:

There are more of these space launch sites but none of them are comparable in size with the 2 mentioned above.

Artificial islands

2009-03-27T14:04:00.000-07:00

Artificial islands
What is a better symbolization of a manufactured landscape than an artificial islands? When you talk about artificial islands i guess that everybody would immediately think about the Palm island projects at Dubai. These are the biggest artifcial islands under construction in the world today. In total 4 big artificial island projects are going on here: The Palm Jumeirah island project (Check out the skyscrapercity thread ) ,the Palm Jebel Ali project (skyscrapercity thread ) , the Palm Deira project ( not visible in google maps yet ), and the amazing World Islands project.

(skyscrapercity thread). All these projects together can be seen in the picture below:

Similar to the Palm Islands in Dubai is the Al Bahrain artificial island project in Bahrain. The project consist of a series of 13 small man-made islands linked together to form 1 island. Totally it is covering an area of 20 million square meters:

In the northern part of Bahrein is another large artificial island. This is called Amwaj Island project. The Amwaj Islands was reclaimed from the relatively shallow seas to the northeast of Muharraq Island, which is the northernmost island in the Kingdom of Bahrain.The Islands contain residential, commercial (highrise) and hotel and retail buildings, as well as a 240 m diameter circular marina with over 140 berths:

When talking about the largest artificial island you have to be in the Netherlands. The Flevopolder, which was reclaimed on the Zuiderzee and was completed in 1968, is the biggest artificial island in the world:

Agriculture terraces

2009-03-27T08:28:00.000-07:00

Rice terraces:
In agriculture, a terrace is a leveled section of a hilly cultivated area, designed as a method of soil conservation to slow or prevent the rapid surface runoff of irrigation water. Often such land is formed into multiple terraces, giving a stepped appearance. The most common crop on these terraces is rice. Nowhere in the world such spectacular agriculture terraces (rice terrases in this case) are found as in the Philippine Cordilleras. The philipinne Cordilleras is a mountain range in northern Philipinne. The most spectacular and most famous rice terraces here are the ones around the village of Banaue. The Rice Terraces here are commonly referred to by Filipinos as the "Eighth Wonder of the World". This is no surprise if you see the pictures below:

There are many other rice terraces in the Philipinne Cordilleras. Like here near Batad:

Agriculture terraces are common in whole South-East Asia and especially in southern China. The rice terraces built by the Hani nationality in Yuanyang County in China are a little known scenic wonder in South-West China's Yunnan province. Dropping from near the summits of the 2500 metre Ailao Mountain Range to the deep cleft of the Red River, they are among the world's most spectacular and extensive terraces:

Here near the town of Longshen in the Guanxi province in China another large area of rice terraces is situated:

In Vietnam there are also many big rice terrace projects. Here near Sa Pa in Vietnam for example:

In Peru, the Inca made use of otherwise unusable slopes by drystone walling to create terraces. The most famous they made are at the site of Inca town of Machu Picchu. These are really steep terraces:

Khofra farming communities

2009-03-26T04:27:00.000-07:00

Kufra farming communities:
Khofra is a town in Libya in the middle of the Sahara desert. The water to this town is supplied by an underground water network. When you are tied to an underground channel of water, you’re encouraged to make efficient use of space. This effient use of space is perfectly seen in the farming communities near this city you can see below. It for sure makes a very special seight seen from the sky:

These hexagonal shaped communities consist of a central square surrounded by sixteen farms. This way these communities are able to efficiently deliver water to each farmer because on this central square the water for all the farmers is supplied by some sort of an underground well where the underground water network is attached to. The land of each farmer stretches out for 500 meters behind their farm :

In total there are 15 of these communities, and they are building more of them as you can see here.

Iron ore terminals

2009-03-25T12:47:00.000-07:00

The biggest iron ore terminals in the world:
The biggest and most efficient iron ore terminal in the world is situated in Qingdao port in China. 50 million tonnes of iron ore are passing here each year. And yet Huangdao accounts for just one-sixteenth of China's total iron ore use. That seems quite logical if you consider that each year China builds high-rise apartments for 19 million new urban migrants, produces 8.5 million cars, completes 17 major city airports and rolls out tens of thousands of kilometres of railways, tunnels, bridges and elevated highways. In the same Chinese province (Shandong) the Iron terminal of Rizhao port is situated. Rizhao port is one of the biggest iron ore import ports in China. In the picture below you can see the giant iron ore terminal in this port which is the second biggest in the world:

Another major terminal is the iron ore terminal of Sao Luis port in Brazil. This facility has the largest linear loader in the world (16,000 tph capacity) capable of loading the largest bulk carriers. After Brazil Australia is the biggest export country of Iron ore. In Port Hedland in Australia a huge iron ore terminal is situated which is for sure among the biggest in the world:

And in Dampier there is another huge terminal. To be precise 2 terminals; here and here at the Intercourse Island, off Dampier. This view below shows the iron ore stockpiles, ship-loading jetty and port control tower on Intercourse island:

Most of the Iron ore of this terminal is coming from the Tom Price iron mine 320km inland

Thunder Bay's grain terminals

2009-03-25T02:57:00.000-07:00

Thunder bay's grain terminals:
Thunder Bay in Ontario Canada once held claim to the largest grain-handling port in the world. Today Thunder Bay still remains one of the world's largest grain-handling facilities . The port ships between 8 and 10 million tonnes annually, with the use of 9 giant terminal elevators capable of cleaning and storing 1.4 million tonnes of grain. These 9 giant terminals can be seen in the areal view below:

The city skyline is dominated by these 70 meters high structures like you can see in the picture below:

The biggest grain dock in the port and probably also in the world is the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool's Terminal 7 grain dock. Comprised of two separate buildings Terminal 7 has a capacity of 362,600 tonnes of grain:

You can see the huge size of this grain dock above( 550 m long, and almost 70 meters high ) , when you compare it to the freight ship. Further north, and south at this grain terminal 7, there are other big grain terminals. For example this one at the northern part of the city:

Ore docks of lake Superior

2009-03-24T14:59:00.001-07:00

The Ore docks of lake superior:
An ore dock is a large structure used for loading ore (typically from railway cars or ore jennies) onto ships. The typical construction of an ore dock is a long high structure, with a railway track or tracks along the top with a number of "pockets" into which ore is unloaded from cars, typically by gravity. Each pocket has a chute that can be lowered to discharge the ore into the hold of a ship berthed alongside. Many of these type of docks can be found in harbour towns along the coast of lake superior in the U.S. There are not many of these impressive structures in use anymore most of them have been torn down or abandoned.

The largest dock of this type in the world exist in Superior, Wisconsin, as part of BNSF's Allouez Taconite Facility. This ore dock is 750 m long and is 30 meters high:

Not far from this structure three other of these ore docks can be found. In the town of Duluth near Superior two more of these impressive structures are situated:

More of these kind of ore docks at lake Superior can be found here in the town of Two Harbours:

, here at the town of Ashland:

,and here in Marquette:

Seaweed farms

2009-03-24T08:28:00.000-07:00

Seaweed farming:
Seaweed is a loose colloquial term encompassing macroscopic, multicellular, benthic marine algae.The ecology of seaweeds is dominated by two specific environmental requirements. These are the presence of seawater (or at least brackish water) and the presence of light sufficient to drive photosynthesis. A very common requirement is also to have a firm point of attachment. As a result, seaweeds are most commonly found in the littoral zone and within that zone more frequently on rocky shores than on sand or shingle. Seaweeds are used as food, medicines, fertilizers,and for industrial purposes. Seaweeds are extensively used as food by coastal people, particularly in East Asia, e.g. Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam, but also in Indonesia, Peru, the Canadian Maritimes, Scandinavia, Ireland, Wales, Philippines, and Scotland, among other places. Seaweed is very common in most oceans and sea's, but is also farmed in so called seaweed farms. This is done on small plots ( floating nets ) floating in the water ( most of the time in a bay ), where the seaweed is attached on.

These seaweed farms can be huge and can excist of thousands of these floating seaweed plots. Here in China for example a very big seaweed farm is situated:

The biggest in the world is situated in the Jiaozhou Bay near Qingdao in China. This particular seaweed farm is producing almost half of the total global seaweed production. This farm isn't using these typical floating plot's but is using some kind of underwater nets where the seaweed is attached to:

Seaweed farms are also very common in the bay of Tokyo. The biggest in this area is this one:

Each plot you see in the picture above is 100 meters long and the dimensions of the total farm is 6km by 4km. Here is another seaweed farm in China. This farm is situated near a tidal area as you can see in the picture below:

Where city traffic "collides"

2009-03-23T14:40:00.000-07:00

Where city traffic "collides":
I wondered where the busiest city cross roads in the world are. Places where city traffic metaphorically collides and traffic rulez no longer excist. I figured out that this cross road in Ho Chi Minh city might easy be the busiest and most chaotic crossroad in a city in the world. At this point 6 roads with huge amount of motorbycicles and other traffic, like seen in the picture below, come together at one point:

The number of motorcycles in Ho Chi Minh city is currently 4 million, more then in any other city in the world. There are also over 500,000 automobiles, packing the city's arterial roads and making traffic congestion and air pollution common problems. While Beijing used to be called "the City of Bicycles", Ho Chi Minh City is "the Capital of Motorbikes". Crossing a road in the centre of this city is a real achievement ( youtube video ). As you can see there are not many traffic rulez in Vietnam and due to this every year 30,000 people die as a result of road accidents in Vietnam (that doesn't include the number of people injured).

Another very busy crossroad ca be found here in Lagos in Nigeria:

At this crossroad ,in the middle of this metropol with 10 million people, two main roads come together. Most of the time this road is highly congested because of the Oshodi market nearby and the big busstation along the road. Pictures of the Oshodi market nearby can be seen below:

The roundabout of Connaught place in New Delhi in India is also among the busiest cross roads in the world. This roundabout is situated in the middle of an agglomeration with 13 million people so it probably comes as no surpise that this roundabout is congested most of the day:

When you are talking about the busiest pedestrian crossroad in the world then you have to be in Tokyo in Japan. The Shibuya crossroad in the Shibuya district in Tokyo is considered as the bussiest pedestrian crossroad in the world ( youtube). In rush hours the entire crossroad is filled with one big human crowd:

In bejing, the city of bycicles, drive 3 million cars around. This is causing really big smog problems in the city. Despite rising expenditure on prevending pollution control, Beijing is facing increasing problems as its booming economy never slows its pace. One of the most bussiest crossroads in the city is where the 3rd ringroad meets the main boulevard of Bejing:

At this point the traffic is like hell on rush hour:

In Europe a place of crazy and busy traffic in a city is the roundabout of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris where 12 roads of this city come together. At the point you enter the roundabout there are no traffic rulez anymore and the law of the strongest flourishes:

In the picture below you can see the traffic on the Champs Elysees, the main boulevard of paris, going towards the roundabout.

Longest bridges

2009-03-13T06:43:00.000-07:00

Longest bridges:
The longest bridge in the world is the Lake Pontchartrain bridge which is 38.42 km long and is crossing the Pontchartrain lake from New Orleans to Mandeville. It is stretching as far as the eye can see:

The second longest bridge is also situated in the USA, and is the Chesapeake bay bridge that connects Norfolk to Northhampton county. This bridge is 37 km long. It als has 2 tunnels in it so the ships can pass into the bay. Like you can see below:

In China the third longest bridge is located. This bridge is called the Hangzhou bay bridge ( Not visible from this height in google maps ) and is 32.5 km long. It is connecting the Shanghai metropol to the city of Ningbo. It is an very important bridge for the regions economy, because it brings back the traveling time between these two cities with a couple of hours:

Equal in length (32.5 km) is the Donghai bridge which is located in the same region. It connects Shanghai with the Yangshan island.

The King Fahd Cause way which connects the state of Bahrain with Saudi Arabia is the fifth longest bridge in the world. It is 25km long. In the middle of the bridge there is an island with bording crossing posts on it:

Among the 10 longest bridges in the world are also: The Vasco de Gama bridge in Lisabon (17.2 km), the Painang bridge in Malaysia (13.5km) , the Rio-Niteroi bridge in Rio de Janeiro ( 13.29km), the San Mateo-Hayward bridge in the Bay of San Fransisco (11.26km), and the Seven mile bridge in Southern Florida.

Marble quarries

2009-03-12T06:07:00.000-07:00

Marble quarries:
Marble is a metamorphic rock resulting from the recrystallization of limestone. Heat and pressure over time cause the carbonate minerals to recrystallize into an interlocking mosaic of crystals, the different colours due to the various mineral impurities such as clay, silt and sand.
One of the biggest marble quarries in the world is found in Carrara in Italy. This little town is famous for it's marble quarries in the nearby mountains. Carrara marble has been used since the time of Ancient Rome; the Pantheon and Trajan's Column in Rome are constructed of it, and many sculptures of the Renaissance, such as Michelangelo's David, were carved from Carrara marble. There are a lot of seperate quarries which together form an impressive landscape:

Another region with huge quarries is the Evora province in Portugal. Here near the village of Estremoz for example a very deep marble quarry is situated:

Further to the South East the The Rosa Portugal marble quarries are situated. This is the biggest marble production area in the world. There are at least 50 marble quarries in this area of this type:

In Rajasthan near the town of Makrana in India another huge Marble production "centre" is located. Around this town 500 marble quarries can be found. These marble quarries have an elongated shape. And if you would count them as one then the quarries stretch for 12.5 kilometers at certain points. For example here the quarries begin in the Northern part of Makrana and they end here 12.5 kilometers to the south. The world famous monument The Taj Mahal was made of marble coming from these quarries:

Solar furnaces

2009-03-07T03:13:00.000-08:00

Solar furnaces:

A solar furnace is a structure used to harness the rays of the sun in order to produce high temperatures, usually for industry. This is achieved using a curved mirror (or an array of mirrors) that acts as a parabolic reflector, concentrating light (Insolation) onto a focal point.

The largest solar furnace in the world is at Odeillo in the Pyrenees of France, opened in 1970. It employs an array of plane mirrors to gather the rays of light from the sun, reflecting them on to a larger curved mirror. The rays are then focused onto an area the size of a cooking pot and can reach 3,000 °C. This large curved mirror is as big as an 8 story high building:

A similair solar oven is situated in Parkent in Uzbekistan. This thing is used to melt down aluminum. It's called the "physics-sun":

This one in Rehovot in Israel on the terrain of the Weizmann institute of science also belongs to the biggest in the world. This one is used for a scientific expirements:

Another big solar furnace is the solar two furnace near Barstow in California (U.S):

This thing is using the same basisc method as the solar furnace in Odeillo but it's not for scientific reasons but to generate energy. It has hundreds of large mirror assemblies, or heliostats, that track the sun, reflecting the solar energy onto a tower where a black receiver absorbs the heat. High-temperature heat transfer fluid is used to carry the energy to a boiler on the ground where the steam is used to spin a series of turbines, much like a traditional power plant. This plant is not at work anymore since 1999.

Center pivot irrigation

2009-03-06T10:04:00.000-08:00

Center pivot irrigation:
In an area with a dry climate center pivot irrigation is often used . This way it is possible to have agriculture. This method of agricultural irrigation results in a circular field of crops. A huge column of sprinklers, fixed to the ground at one end, slowly travels around in a circle whilst spraying the crops below:

The system is common all over the world but it is especially used in parts of the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and in desert areas in the Sahara and the Middle East. There is no place on earth where these kind of crops are more numerous then in the dry mid-west of the U.S. Like for example here in Texas, or here in Kansas.

More special is it when these crops are in the middle of a desert, like here in Jordan:

or here in Lybia in the Sahara. The water for this project is stored in giant water tanks:

and here in the Sahara in Lybia:

Very large desert irrigation projects are situated here in southeastern Libya which is called the Al Khufrah Oasis ( This is one of the largest agricultural projects in a desert area) and here in the desert of Saudi Arabia.

The russian woodpecker

2009-03-06T08:18:00.000-08:00

The Russian woodpecker:
The Russian woodpacker is a 900 metre-long radar system based in the radiation "wasteland" just outside Chernobyl. It was used during the cold war to detect anti-ballistic missiles from as far as thousands of miles away. The signal it transmitted apparently sounded like a woodpecker and was so strong that it resulted in worldwide complaints following disruptions to various broadcasts. This thing was active between July 1976 and December 1989:

Another of these kind of sovjet missile detectors can be found here near Mykolaiv in the Ukraine.

Chernobyl nuclear power plant

2009-03-06T04:45:00.000-08:00

Chernobyl nuclear power plant:
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is located near the town of Prypiat in the Ukraine. The worst Nuclear reactor accident in the history took place here on April 26 of 1986. On this date the reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant exploded killing 30 people immediatelly and almost 90.000 the 23 years after the ramp due to radiation. Below you can see an aerial view of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as it was before the disaster:

After the explotion took place the area was evacuated in a radius of 30 kilometers around the nuclear plant. This is still the case today. The towns of Prypiat and Chernobyl (the biggest cities in the 30 km radius) turned into ghost towns:

In this town of Prypiat (seen in the pictures above) there are many famous places that still remember people what disaster took place here in 1986. For example this hotel ( featured in call of duty 4: modern warfare):

And of course the famous ferris wheel in the park of rest with the empty commieblocks in the background:

It is estimated that it takes 1500 years before the radiation is sufficiently low to make the area around the nuclear plant habitable again.

Tokyo’s flood control system

2009-03-05T10:11:00.000-08:00

Tokyo’s flood control system:

Tokyo is an impressive city above ground, but it is maybe an even more impressive city under ground with it's mind-bogglingly flood control system. This flood conrol system is called the G-Cans Project and begun 12 years ago, to build infrastructure for preventing overflow of the major rivers and waterways spidering the city (A serious problem for Tokyo during rainy-season and typhoon season). The underground waterway is the largest in the world and sports five 32m diameter and 65m deep concrete containment silos which are connected by 6.4 kilometers of tunnel sitting 50 meters beneath the surface:

The project is located in the northern suburbs of Tokyo in Saitama prefecture. The red line in the picture below shows the course of the flood control system:

The projects control building is located here, and here you can see one of the drains that collects the flood water in the tunnels in case of a flood. The five concrete containment silos are located here (the most eastern one), here , here, here , and here (the most western one).

Neutrino detectors

2009-03-05T08:05:00.000-08:00

Neutrino detectors:

A neutrino detector is a device designed to detect neutrinos. Because neutrinos are very weakly interacting, neutrino detectors must be very large in order to detect a significant number of neutrinos. Neutrino detectors are often built underground in order to isolate the detector from cosmic rays and other background radiation. These Neutrino detectors look very futurustic for example the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) located in a mine in the wastelands around Sudbury, Canada. This thing was build 2000 meters below the ground and is the deepest Neutrino detector in the world. It uses 1000 tonnes of heavy water contained by a 12 meter diameter acrylic vessel. Neutrinos react with the heavy water (D2O) to produce flashes of light called Cherenkov radiation. This light is then detected by an array of 9600 photomultiplier tubes mounted in a geodesic support structure surrounding the heavy water vessel. The detector is immersed in light (normal) water within a 30 meter barrel-shaped cavity (the size of a 10 story building!) seen below:

Located in the deepest part of the mine, the overburden of rock shields the detector from cosmic rays. Another big one is the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector tank near the city of Hida in Japan. The observatory was designed to search for proton decay, study solar and atmospheric neutrinos, and keep watch for supernovas in the Milky Way Galaxy. The Super-K is located 1,000 m underground in Kamioka Mining and Smelting Co.'s Mozumi Mine in Hida's Kamioka area. It consists of a cylindrical stainless steel tank that is 41.4 m tall and 39.3 m in diameter holding 50,000 tons of ultra-pure water. These pictures below were taken within the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector tank, before it was filled completely with water and sealed:

Each of the 11,200 light detectors was hand assembled, and an expert glassblower shaped each of the glass bulbs. Using Super-Kamiokande, scientists for the first time were able to measure the mass of neutrinos. More photos of this detector can be seen here. Another one worth mentioning is the Kamioka Liquid Scintillator Antineutrino Detector (KamLAND) which takes place in the same underground laboratory (Kamioka Observatory) as the Super-K detector. You can see this detector in the picture below:

The Prora complex

2009-03-05T06:48:00.000-08:00

Longest buildings:
The longest building in the world is the Prora complex on the German island of Rugen. This immense PRORA complex, built by the Nazis in the thirties, is 6 floors high and stretches for more then 4 km along the Rugen island coast. The northern edge of the building consists of ruins while the middle and southern parts are more or less intact. The Nazi-organisation Kraft-durch-Freude (roughly translated "Strength through Joy") ordered the building of PRORA, which was to provide room for a stunning twenty thousand holiday makers! The general idea was that German workers and their families could rest from their labours here, getting fit for more labour and of course for war:

Bauxite mines

2009-03-04T10:30:00.000-08:00

Bauxite mines:
Bauxite is used to make aluminium. First the Alumina is refined from Buaxite in an alumina refinery After the Alumina is refined from bauxite the aluminium is extracted from its oxide alumina in an aluminium smelter.

The biggest Bauxite mine is the Huntly mine located near Dwellingup in Australia. Huntly bauxite production has doubled since 1990 and currently produces around 23 million tonnes of bauxite per year. This mine is supplying bauxite ore to Pinjarra and Kwinana Refineries. To transport the Bauxite to the refinery it uses an overland convejor of more then 20 km in length:

At the end of the lines the Bauxite is stored at the refinery bauxite storage side. An even longer conveyor belt is going from this Bauxite mine to the bauxite refinery in Worsley. It is fifthy two kilometers long and is the longest conveyor belt in the world. The worlds second biggest bauxite mine is located near the town of Trombetas in Brazil. This mine transports the bauxite to the nearby bauxite bulk terminal:

Shiplifts

2009-03-03T06:02:00.000-08:00

Shiplift:

The shiplift in the three gorges dam in china is the world's largest ship lift. The shiplift lifts 12,800 tons up 113 metres. The shiplift is seen under construction in the picture below:

It is located next to the three gorges shiplocks which are the biggest locks in the world. The second tallest shiplift in the world is the strepy-thieu boat lift in Hainaut in Belgium. It handles a height difference of 73.15 metres (240 feet) between the upstream and downstream:

There are also Horizontal shiplifts which are called Inclined planes. The biggest of this type in the world is the Ronquières Inclined Plane in Belgium. It has a length of 1,432 m and lifts boats through 67.73 m vertically. It consists of two large caissons mounted on rails. Each caisson measures 91 m long by 12 m wide and has a water depth between 3 and 3.70 m. It can carry one boat of 1,350 tonnes or many smaller boats within the same limits:

The tower at the highest point of this ship lift is an important landmark in the surounding area:

Only two other of these kind of big horizontal shiplifts excist in the world. These are The Saint-Louis-Arzviller inclined plane in France which provides a tranverse change in level of 44.55m:

and the Krasnojarks dam shiplift in Russia:

A shiplift which for sure should be mentioned when talking about special designs is the Falkirk wheel shiplift in Falkirk, Scotland. The Falkirk wheel is the world’s only rotating boat-lift. It is not suitable for big cargo ships but only for smaller "pleasure" vessels:

Shipyards

2009-03-02T10:22:00.000-08:00

Shipyards:

Shipyards and dockyards are places which repair and build ships. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Hyuandai heavy Industry Shipbuilding Division, the world's number one shipbuilder, leads the global shipbuilding industry with a 15% share of the market. It's shipyard in Ulsan in South Korea is currently the largest in the world and has the capability to build a variety of vessels including Commercial Cargo, Offshore and Naval vessels. The Hyundai shipyard stretches over four kilometers along the coast of Mipo Bay in Ulsan. Most of the docks in the shipyard are found here:

But there is another major dock yard which is called Mipo dock yard over here:

The future biggest shipyard however will be a shipyard from the Chinese Shipbuilding company CSSC. The shipyard, covering eight kilometres of coast along Shanghai's Changxign Island, will be fully operational by 2015. Now it is considered as the second biggest shipyard in the world after the one in Ulsan:

When talking about militaity vessels the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia, is one of the largest militairy shipyards in the world. It is specializing in repairing, overhauling and modernizing naval ships and submarines. For example these aircraft cariers which are stationed at the Naval station in Norfolk.

In the cruise ship building business the Turku shipyard in Finland is the biggest in the world. A large part of the world's largest cruise ships have built in the Turku shipyards:

The world's largest cruise ship, Freedom of the Seas, also has been build in the Turku ship yard. Seen in action here near Mexico.

Sudbury smelting operations

2009-03-01T06:04:00.000-08:00

Sudbury smelting operations:
Sudbury is located in Canada and is considered as one of the most polluted cities on earth. The barren landscape, blackened rock faces, lack of vegetation and endless sea of dead tree stumps make this place seem like a different planet. The reason for the polluting industry around the city are the pentlandite, pyrite and pyrrhotite ores in the ground. They contain profitable amounts of many elements primarily nickel and copper, but also including smaller amounts of cobalt, platinum, gold, silver, selenium and tellurium. It also contains an unusually high concentration of sulfur. Local smelting of the ore releases this sulfur into the atmosphere where combines with water vapour to form sulfuric acid, contributing to acid rain. The effects of these smelters have been strikingly widespread: 40 square miles around Sudbury had been rendered completely barren of vegetation, 140 square miles around supported only shrub and herbaceous cover and vegetation had been in some way effected within a 1700 mile area. While building the "superstacks" of the smelters higher it has decreased the intensity of pollution in the immediate Sudbury area, much more of the surrounding region has now become effected:

One of the major polluting smelters is the Inco's Copper cliff processing facility. It is the largest nickel smelting operation in the world, with the second tallest chimney in the world (380m):

The area around this smelter is highly polluted. INCO also dumps it's waste molten slag after the processing of nickel in the surrounding area. It looks like a lava from a volcano. When the molten slag is being poured out of the ladles, the city skyline glows bright red and gives the impression of a volcano erupting:

Other smelters that contribute to the pollution around Sudbury are this smelter,and this one.

Alumina refineries

2009-02-28T10:37:00.000-08:00

Alumina refineries:
Alumina, or aluminium oxide is refined from bauxite in a caustic soda/high temperature process. Caustic solution is used to dissolve the alumina, which is settled out, filtered and heated to evaporate the water. The resulting fine white granular substance is then smelted in so called aluminium smelters.

The biggest alumina refinery in the world has opened in 2008 in the northern Brazilian town of Barcarena. The refinery provides seven percent of global aluminum production, with an annual output of 6.26 million tons. In the picture below you can see the plant when it was under construction:

Most of the other big alumina refineries in the world are located in Australia (Which is among the biggest pruducers of aluminium in the world). This alumina refinery in Pinjarra in Western Australia with an Annual production of 4.2 million tons is the world's second biggest. The waste ( red mud) coming from the factory is pumped into a giant disposal site where it is stored. This red mud is not a hazardous waste and can be disposed of in an environ-mentally neutral manner. In the pictures below you can see such red mud disposal sites from a aluminium refinery in Ukraine:

The third biggest in the world is the Queensland alumina limited refinery located in Queensland Australia. It has a capacity of 3.95 million tons a year:

In Gove in Northern Territory in Australia this alumina refinery is located with a producion of 3.6 million tonnes. This refinery also has it giant disposal sites. The bauxite itself which is used in the refinery is mined here and brought to the refinery by pipe lines.

Among the ten biggest in the world are also this refinery in Worsley in Australia with an anual production of 3.5 milllion tonnes, this one in Weiqiao in China (2.5 million tonnes), this one in Wagerup in Australia ( 2.4 million tonnes ), this refinery in Point Comfort in Texas (2.3 million tonnes and the biggest of the U.S ):

and the Paraman alumina factory in Suriname ( 2.2 million tonnes ).

Athabasca Oil Sands

2009-02-28T07:13:00.000-08:00

Athabasca Oil Sands:
Oil sands, tar sands, or extra heavy oil is a type of bitumen deposit. The sands are naturally occurring mixtures of sand or clay, water and an extremely dense and viscous form of petroleum called bitumen. They are found in large amounts in many countries throughout the world, but are found in extremely large quantities in Canada and Venezuela. Because extra-heavy oil and bitumen flow very slowly, if at all, toward producing wells under normal reservoir conditions, the sands must be extracted by strip mining or the oil made to flow into wells by in situ techniques which reduce the viscosity by injecting steam, solvents, and/or hot air into the sands. These processes can use more water and require larger amounts of energy than conventional oil extraction.

At the present time, only Canada has a large-scale commercial oil sands industry, though a small amount of oil from oil sands is produced in Venezuela. The biggest oil sand operation in the world is taking place north of Fort McMarray in Alberta, Canada. These oil sands are called the Athabasca oil sands. There are three big mines in the Athabasca oil sand project which together form the biggest mining site in the world: The Syncrude mine serving the Syncrude oil refinery:

The Suncor mine, serving the Suncor oil refinery:

and the Albian sands, 15km north of the Syncrude mine.

Tokyo cityscapes

2009-02-26T11:18:00.000-08:00

Tokyo is the biggest metropolitan area in the world, and probably also has the most spectacular looking cityscape in the world. As of October 2007, an estimated 12.79 million people live in Tokyo with 8.653 million living within Tokyo's 23 wards. During the daytime, the population swells by over 2.5 million as workers and students commute from adjacent areas. The prefecture is the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, the world's most populous metropolitan area with 35 million people.

The Northern Chinese plain

2009-02-25T13:28:00.000-08:00

The Northern Chinese plain:
The Northern Chinese plain in China is one of the most densly populated rural area's in the world. The plain covers an area of about 409,500 square kilometers where approximately 600 million people live. The Nortern Chinese plain is the dark green area below the city of Beijing on the map shown below:

Beneath you can also see a map of the population density of China. The Northern Chinese plain is recognized easily by the red area on the North east coast of China. The density is higher then 445 people per square kilometer in most parts:

About 80 percent of the people on the Northern Chinese plain live in small, rural villages, and work on the land. The rest lives in overcrowded cities, where housing is scarce. Although this percentage living in villages is decreasing at a huge rate, due to urbanisation.

On the North China Plain, villages are fairly evenly distributed and are connected with one another by footpaths and cart tracks. Most of the villages are closer then 2000m from each other. This way these villages form a grid of villages all across the Chinese plain. This can for example be seen here in the Hebei province, here in the Henan province, and here in the Shandong province. These patterns of villages can be seen everywhere on the Northern Chinese plain in this type of density and in these patterns:

The Houses in these villages are built close together and are mostly made of sun-dried brick or pounded earth. Many of the market towns or even large villages are surrounded by walls. The formation of these villages is related not only to the increasing population and to a long historical background but also to water supply (the practice of drilling deep wells, for instance) and to defense (especially, in former days, against attack by bandits). Many of the large villages have no urban atmosphere at all, even with populations of several thousand.

Sau Paulo cityscape

2009-02-24T08:18:00.000-08:00

There is no city in the world which is such a concrete jungle as Sau Paulo in Brazil is. This city has
19 million inhabitants. For low highrise buildings nobody can beat São Paulo! It has an estimated number of rougly 30.000 buildings over 12 floors! New York, Hong kong, Shanghai each have about 4-8 thousand buildings over 12 floors, with means that São Paulo has more highrises than all these cities combined. The pictures below are the best i could find on the web that show the "concrete jungle" of this city:

City panorama's

2009-02-24T03:56:00.000-08:00

Here are some of my favourite 360 panorama's of cityscapes on the site www.360cities.net:

A view from the empire state building overlooking New York city.
This view of Seoul from an observatory on top of a hill.
The city of Vancouver at night.
Los Angeles from the Hollywood sign.
This view of the Shanghai skyline.
This one of Amsterdam from a roof.
The paris skyline from the Sacre coeur.
This view of Franfurt from the main tower.
An evening view of downtown Montreal in Canada.
Rio de Janeiro from the lookout point of Dona Marta.
This cityscape of Cape Town in South Africa.
This evening view of Paris from the Eiffel tower.
Hong Kong from the peak viewing terrace.
A view of Seoul from mount Nam.
A New york city view from downtown Brooklyn at night.
A view of Rotterdam from the Montevideo.
This view of Santiago in Chile.
Chicago from the Hancock centre.
A HD view of Harlem New York ( HD view need to be installed )
This view from a tower in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.

Granite quarries

2009-02-24T01:23:00.001-08:00

Biggest granite quarries:
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. It is mined in so called granite quarries. The biggest granite quarry in the world and also the most spectacular looking is located in Graniteville in the sate of Vermont in the USA:

The world's largest open faced granite mine is found in Mount Airy in North Carolina in the United States:

Also in the U.S this grenite mine near Norcross in Georgia is located. It is also considered one of the largest granite quarries in the world in terms of output:

Integrated chemical sites

2009-02-23T13:06:00.000-08:00

Biggest chemical sites in the world:
The BASF is the world's leading chemical company, employing 80,000 people at all and about 35,000 (a few years ago, the employee total was about 55,000) of them in the Ludwigshafen in Germany. BASF's site in Ludwigshafen is the biggest integrated chemical site in the world. Most of the energy used here is homemade – in the company's own combined cycle power plant. BASF's Ludwigshafen site is impressive: The site in the Rhine-Neckar region in Germany covers an area of more than ten square kilometers, has 115 kilometers of road and 2,000 kilometers of pipeline. Around 33,000 people work here in more than 200 plants. The site's energy needs could be a world record: Each year almost 20 million metric tons of steam and more than six billion kilowatt hours of electricity – that is around the same as the electricity consumption of a German state such as Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. BASF Ludwigshafen consumes a good one percent of Germany's entire electricity each year. The energy is used to manufacture chemicals, crop protection agents and raw materials for cosmetics, but also plastics and performance products:

Their second biggest site worldwide is located in the harbour of Antwerp:

Another huge integrated chemical plant is found in Freeport in Texas (birdview). This place is home to Dow chemical company's largest plant and is also one of the largest chemical sites in the world. The Dow Chemical Company is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan. As of 2007, it is the second largest chemical manufacturer in the world by revenue. Dow Chemical is a provider of plastics, chemicals, and agricultural products with presence in more than 175 countries and employing 46,000 people worldwide:

The headquarters of Dow chemical company are based in Midland in Michigan. Here in Midland their second biggest site is located:

When mentioning the biggest chemical sites in the world the chemical sites at Dhzerzhinsk in Russia should for sure be mentioned. This site is among the biggest in the world. According to September 12, 2007 study by Blacksmith Institute (United States), Dzerzhinsk is also one of the worst polluted cities of the world and has a life expectancy of 42 years for men and 47 for women. Among the biggest chemical sites in the world are also this site of Sinopec in Nanjing in China, and this site of INEOS in Runcorn in England:

Busiest road bridges

2009-02-23T10:48:00.000-08:00

Most of the busiest road bridges are located in metropolian areas where rivers devide them in two parts. These kind of bridges have to take a huge amount of traffic each day. The George Washington bridge, linking Manhattan to New Jersey, is the most heavily used bridge in the world, with a daily traffic of over 300,000 vehicles:

When also taking in acount the amount of pedestrians using the bridge the Howrah bridge in Kolkota is the busiest bridge crossing in the world. It connects the east and the west part of this city with 15 million inhabitants. It successfully bears the weight of a daily traffic of approximately 150,000 vehicles and an unbelievable amount of 4,000,000 pedestrians:

The Oakland bay bridge in san Fransisco which is the main traffic road bewteen east and west San Fransisco is also among the busiest bridge crossings in the world. It carries approximately 270,000 vehicles per day:

In Europe the busiest bridge is the Bosphoros bridge in Istanbul. This bridge is connecting the Asian part of Istanbul with the European part. Nowadays, around 180,000 vehicles pass daily in both directions, almost 85% being automobiles:

Other bridges which are also considered one of he busiest in europe are the Kingston bridge in Glasgow in Scotland (It is carrying around 150,000 vehicles every day), and the Van Brienenoord bridge in Rotterdam in the Netherlands with over 250,000 vehicles every day.

Atlantis "found" in google maps

2009-02-20T03:03:00.000-08:00

The legendary island of Atlantis seems to be found in google maps due to the new ocean map feature of google earth. There is a pattern found 1000km east of the coast of Marroco which look's like a layout of a city. It is 137km long and 114 km wide. So what is the structure? Actually, there is no structure there. It's merely a grid of higher resolution sounding data amid a lower-resolution dataset, taken from a ship surveying the area:

Moscow air pollution

2009-02-19T11:46:00.000-08:00

This picture of Moscow was made by Alexander Petrenko:

It was made on a very cold day, and shows the enormous amount of industry in Moscow. The picture was made from here pointing towards the South East.

Simulation of air traffic

2009-02-19T11:12:00.000-08:00

There are around 2.51 million flights globally every month, which works out to 83667 every day, 3486 every hour or 58 taking off every minute, so about 1 every second (on average). The video below is a simulation of global air traffic over 24 hours.

Here you can find the worlds busiest arfields by number of passengers. Hartsfield Jackson airport in Atlanta in the USA is the worlds biggest with almost 83 million passengers handled here every year (birdview)

Oil refineries

2009-02-10T03:59:00.000-08:00

Oil refinery:
Raw or unprocessed crude oil is not generally useful in its raw or unprocessed form, as it comes out of the ground. To make this crude oil a useful material it needs processed at an oil refinery. There it is refined into more useful petroleum products, such as gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt base, heating oil, kerosene, and liquefied petroleum gas. Crude contains hundreds of different types of hydrocarbons all mixed together. You have to separate the different types of hydrocarbons to have anything useful. Fortunately there is an easy way to separate things, and this is with the use of a distillation tower. The process to make all the different types of materials is shown below:

The biggest oil refineries:
The biggest oil refinery in the world is the SK Corp Uslan Refinery in Uslan ( Soutk Korea ) With an production of 880.000 bpd (Bottles per day ). Reliance Petroleum Jamnagar refinery in India with a current production: 660.000 bpd is the second biggets oil refinery in the world. But the future production will be 1.240.000 bpd, which will make it the biggest in the world. In the picture below you can see the gate to the complex with the refinery in the background:

South Koreas has another big oil refinery. This one is called the LG-Caltex Yosu refinery with an production of 650.000 bpd. The fourth biggest oil refinery is a refinery of Exxon Mobile ( The biggest oil producer in the world ). This Exxon mobil refining is situated on an island in Singapore and has an production of 605.000 bpd:

The Exxon mobil Kawasaki refinery in Tokio is another big one of Exxon Mible with a production of 592.000 bpd. Other major oil refineries in the world are the PDVSA Amuay refinery in Venezuela with 580.000 bpd, the Exxonmobil Baytown Refinery, in Texas, USA with a production of 557.000 bpd:

The Exxon Mobile Baton Rouge refinery in the USA with 493.500 bpd.

The Shell Eastern Petroleum Singapore Pulau Bukom refinery, with a capacity of 458.00 bpd, and Shell Pernis in The Netherlands with a production of 412.000 bpd.

Diamond mines

2009-02-04T13:22:00.000-08:00

Largest Diamond mines:

The richest mine in the world is found in Jwaneng in Botswana about 100 miles west of the city of Gaborono. It is the richest diamond mine in the world when measured by value of recovered diamonds:

When measured by the volume of the diamond production the Argyle diamond mine in the Kimberley region in Western Australia is the biggest. Due to the low proportion of gem-quality diamonds, is not the leader by value:

South Africa's Venetia Diamond Mine located in Limpopo Province, in north-easter South Africa is the third largest in the world. The Venetia diamond mineproduces over 40% of the world's gem-quality diamonds:

The Catoca diamond mine is the fourth largest diamond mine in the world, and is located in Northern Angola:

A very spectacular diamond mine is located in Mirny in Russia. This mine was one of the biggest in the world but is not in production anymore since 2004. The mine is 525 m deep and has a diameter of 1,200 m:

Another special diamond mine is the Diavik diamond mine located 300 kilometers northeast of Yellowknife, capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories. This mine is situated in a very remote area often totally frozen and very hard to reach. It also has it own airport to serve the mine:

In the winter the mine is hard to reach due to snowfall and ice:

Partical accelerators

2009-02-03T01:24:00.000-08:00

Partical accelerators:
Quite simply particle accelerators give high energy to subatomic particles, which then collide with targets. Out of this interaction come many other subatomic particles that pass into detectors. From the information gathered in the detectors, physicists can determine properties of the particles and their interactions. Particle accelerators come in two basic designs, linear (linac) and circular (synchrotron). The longer a linac is, the higher the energy of the particles it can produce. A synchrotron achieves high energy by circulating particles many times before they hit their targets.

Biggest partical acelerators:
The higher the energy of the accelerated particles, the more closely they can probe the structure of matter. For that reason the biggest particel accelerator the LHC ( The large Hadron Collider ) in the world was build at the border of France and Suise:

The particles are accelerated to enormeous speeds using giant magnets in a 27 km circular tunnel lying 100 meters under the ground. Multiple enormeous particle detectors are placed in this circular tunnel where the particles colide. These detectors are called CMS, Atlas, and Alice. The Atlast detector is by far the biggest of the three. You can see it below:

There are more of these giant circular accelerators but not this big. The Relativistic heavy ion collider in Upton New York for example is is the most powerfull heavy iron collider in the world after the LHC. It is only 3834 m long. Another big one is the Tevatron accelerator at the Fermilab near Chicago in the United States. This one also claims to be the most powerfull particle collider in the world after the LHC. The circular ring of this one is 6.3 km:

When talking about lineair accelerators the largest in the world is the main accelerator at the SLAC national accelerator laboratory near San Fransisco. This accelerator is 3.2km long, and lies about 10 meters under the ground. The end is not so close as you might think when looking at this picture below. It would take 45 minutes to walk to the other site:

You can see it very well in google map street view from the innerstate highway 209:

Grotere kaart weergeven

Manufactured landscapes

2009-02-02T14:16:00.000-08:00

All placemarks so far on this blog:

Grotere kaart weergeven

Cement plants

2009-02-02T11:24:00.000-08:00

Cement industry:
Skyscrapers, bridges, roads and dams are all made of concrete, the world’s most widely used building material. Cement is its key ingredient so it is not a big surprise that cement factories make up one of the world's biggest industries. Cement is made by heating limestone with small quantities of other materials (such as clay) to 1450°C in a kiln. The resulting hard substance, called ‘clinker’, is then ground with a small amount of gypsum into a powder to make ‘Ordinary Portland Cement’, the most commonly used type of cement (often referred to as OPC). Concrete is the second most used product on the planet, after water, and almost half of it is produced in China. Cement is also one of the most polluting industries in the world. They produce more than 5% of mankind's carbon dioxide emissions.

Biggest cement plants
Emerging on nearly 3,900 acres near the village of Denby in Missouri in the United States, the new Holcim ( The biggest cement producing company in the world ) facility will be the largest cement plant in the world when it opens in 2009. When fully operational, it will produce approximately four million metric tons of cement annually. The landscape leading to the site is fairly unremarkable until you travel further and crest the hill. From there, 13 enormous behemoth silos appear in the valley below. In the pictures below you can see the construction site of this new cement plant which is currently still under construction:

The current largest cement plant in the United States in operation is the TXI cement plant in Midlothian in Texas (birdview). A recent added cement kiln has increased the capacity at TXI's Midlothian plant from 1.3 to 2.8 million tons per year, making it the biggest in the United States:

This cement plant in Alpena in Michigan in the United States also belongs to the biggest in the United States and the world. Because of Alpena's location in the midst of immense limestone deposits, the Huron Portland Cement Company, founded at Detroit in 1907, chose this site for its plant:

The largest cement plant in Europe is found in the city of Hereke in Turkey. Nowadays the landscape of this town is dominated by this enormous cement factory. Turkey is also one of the biggest cement producers in Europe and the Marmara region, where the Nuh Cement Plant is located, accounts for around 30 percent of the country's production:

Second in Europe is this Cement factory near Voloce in Greece from the cement producer Heracless:

Norilsk mining-metallurgic complex

2009-02-01T12:19:00.000-08:00

Norilsk mining-metallurgic complexes:
An industrial city founded in 1935 as a slave labor camp, the Siberian city of Norilsk in Russia is the northernmost major city in Russia and the city with the world's biggest nickel and palladium producer facilities. The Norilsk mining-metallurgic complexes are sitting near the largest nickel-copper-palladium deposits on Earth. Mining and smelting of nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum and palladium are the major industries. The enormous factories and mines surround the city:

Due to the intense mining, the city is one of the ten most polluted cities in the world, with not a single living tree within 48 km of the nickel smelter Nadezhda ("The Hope"). This picture below shows the enormous nickel smelters in this factory.

This Nadezhda factory is the biggest factory in the surrounding area of Norilsk. But there are three more of these giant factories closer to the city of Norisk. Like this one near a huge mine, this one, this factory at the Northern part of the city, and a factory near the city centre. Together these factories ,combined with the mining that is taking place near the city, make Norilsk one of the most polluted places on earth and your life expectancy will dropp by ten years if you live here. Norilsk also has an extremely harsh climate. Average temperature is approximately −10 degrees Celsius, and temperatures as low as −58 degrees have been recorded. The city is covered with snow for about 250-270 days a year, with snow storms for about 110-130 days. The polar night lasts from December through mid-January, so that Norilsk inhabitants do not see the sun at all for about six weeks. And when you get sick from the pollute air, or the harsh climate you will end up in this depressing hospital, standing in the middle of nowhere:

So Norilsk is defenitely not a place to visit for a tourist trip, except if you like industrial landscapes.