airmarks: road-signs for planes

in the late 1920s, early 1930s, before radio navigation was widely used, pilots of small planes were forced to use familiar landmarks on the ground as a way to find the runway they would hopefully land safely on. there was even a campaign started by the 99s in the early 1930s, the objective being to paint directions to the nearest airport on buildings and structures across the u.s., the result being thousands of enormous ‘road-signs’ for pilots scattered across the nation.

standing in the leg of a giant

with a total weight of 1.2million tonnes, the troll offshore gas platform was built using 245,000m3 of concrete and 100′000 tonnes of steel (apparently the equivalent of 15 eiffel towers), the walls of its legs measuring over a metre thick. following construction, over a period of 7 days, ‘troll a’ was towed from rogaland in norway to the troll gas field in the north sea - a total of more than 200km.

10 stunning ultra-geeky home cinemas

huge screens, incredible sound systems and luxurious seats are popping up in seemingly spare rooms and basements larger than my entire flat. however this is also giving a few movie geeks a real chance to shine and it seems they’re not content with a simple in-home movie theatre decent enough to hold a premiere in. so, in no particular order, here are 10 of the best, geekiest, themed home cinemas on earth…

4 more stupidly cool research facilities

the joint european torus (jet) is the largest nuclear fusion experimental reactor on earth and is also a unique facility for researching fusion technology. jet is an example of a ‘tokamak’, a machine which produces an extremely strong, doughnut shaped magnetic field in order to confine a plasma. in jet’s case these plasmas can reach temperatures in excess of 100 million degrees centigrade…

(another) 5 extremely cool research facilities

i’m currently hooked on these structures so, hot on the heels of the first 5, here’s another bunch of amazing facilities and fascinating machines that have been created for research purposes.

5 unbelievably cool research facilities

otherwordly structures, massive machines, surreal technology….

some incredible beasts have been constructed in the name of research and below are 5 of the most immediately intriguing…