Worlds tallest vehicular bridge

Millau Viaduct

Worlds tallest vehicular bridge

The Millau Viaduct (French: le Viaduc de Millau) is a cable stayed road bridge that spans the valley of the River Tarn near Millau in southern France. It was formally opened on 14 December 2004 and opened to traffic on 16 December 2004. Designed by British master-architect Lord Foster in collaboration with French bridge engineer Michel Virlogeux, it is the tallest vehicular bridge in the world, with one piers summit at 1,118 ft (341 metres), slightly higher than the Eiffel Tower and only 132 ft (40 m) shorter than the Empire State Building.

Design

The Millau Viaduct consists of an eight-span steel roadway supported by seven concrete piers. The roadway weighs 36,000 metric tons and is 2,460 m (8,071 ft) long, measuring 32 m (105 ft) wide by 4.2 m (13.8 ft) deep. The six central spans each measure 342 m (1,122 ft) with the two outer spans measuring 204 m (670 ft). The roadway has a slight slope of 3% descending from south to north, and curves in plan section on a 20 km (12.4 mile) radius to give drivers better visibility. It carries two lanes of traffic in each direction.

Panoramic view of the Millau Viaduct, as seen from the south.

5 heaviest people in the history

Carol Yager (peak weight 727 kg/ 1,600 lbs)

Her peak weight reached up to 727 kg (16, 00 lbs).  She was also famous for losing most weight by natural means. Carol Yager lost 521 lbs weight in just three months. Her skin was breaking down due to a bacterial infection that’s why she was admitted in Hurley Medical Center. She spent terrible time till her death. Carol Yager was unable to stand or walk because of her muscles were not strong enough. She died in a young of 34. Main causes of her death were kidney failure, multiple organ failure and morbid obesity.

Jon Brower Minnoch (peak weight 635 kg / 1400 lbs)

Likewise Carol Yager, Job Brower was also fat in his childhood. In the age of 12 his weight was 132 kg (292 lbs). He married to Jeannette, a woman of normal weight and had two sons. Minnoch was admitted to hospital for 16 months where he lost 419 kg but after being discharged, his weight double. He couldn’t improve any better and died on September 10, 1983, at age 42.

Manuel Uribe (597 kg / 1,316 lb)

Like other heavy people, Manuel Uribe is also living a hard life. He spends 9 years in bed from 2001 to 2009. Even he got married in bed with Claudia on October 26, 2008. On his wedding, he spoke loud and clear to all dishearten people saying “I am proof you can find love in any circumstances. It’s all a question of faith. I have a wife and will form a new family and live a happy life”.

Walter Hudson (544 kg / 1,200 lb)

World’s fourth heaviest power house was born in Brooklyn, New York.  Walter came into lime light when he was trapped inside of his room’s door. Recue team had to break the wall to take him out. He loved to eat as once he said and I quote “”I just ate and enjoyed it”. Although he announced his wedding plans but that remains a dream for his. He died few weeks later.

Rosalie Bradford (544 kg / 1,200 lb)

Rosalie Bradford was Foodaholic since her childhood. Like all other weight giants, she gained weight in young age. At the age of 14 her weight was 92 kg and 140 kg at the age of 15. Rosalie married and had one son. After her marriage, she mostly spent her time at home and gain more weight. All that depressed her much and she tried to kill her using painkillers. Her weight eventually reduced to 136 kg (300 lb). She died on November 29, 2006 in the age of 63.

!~!~! Large Hadron Collider ready to restart !~!~!

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) says it expects to restart the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) by this weekend after more than a year of repairs. The 27 km (17 mi) particle accelerator was launched last year, but suffered a failure from a faulty electrical connection, damaging 53 of the smasher's 9,300 superconducting magnets. Repairs are now completed, and the plan is to begin injecting protons into the LHC this weekend, on the path to search for particles such as predicted-yet- unobserved Higgs Boson. Collected below are some photographs of the repairs, and of the LHC and some of its experiments in various stages of construction.

Combining two major ATLAS inner detector components. The semiconductor tracker is inserted into the transition radiation tracker for the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. These make up two of the three major components of the inner detector. They will work together to measure the trajectories produced in the proton-proton collisions at the centre of the detector when the LHC is switched on. Photo taken on February 22nd, 2006. (Maximilien Brice, © CERN)

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Views of two step of an ultrasound and induction welding to interconnection between two LHC magnet at sector 3-4 during repair operation on March 26th, 2009. 

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Visible damage to the LHC magnets in sector 3-4 of the LHC on November 12th, 2008. On September 19th, 2008, as the LHC was being switched on, a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator's magnets caused a large helium leak, which violently vented 6 tons of helium into the tunnel. The resulting temperature rise damaged some 53 magnets. 

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Detail of some of the damage done to the LHC magnets in sector 3-4 on September 19th, 2008. 

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Moving and placement of a quadrupole at sector 3-4 in the LHC tunnel on April 30th, 2009. 

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A replacement magnet for LHC sector 3-4 being lowered in the tunnel on January 19th, 2009. 

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Moving and placement of a quadrupole at sector 3-4 in the LHC tunnel on April 30th, 2009

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Transporting a quadrupole through sector 3-4 in the LHC tunnel on April 30th, 2009.

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Installation of a new dipole in the LHC tunnel at sector 3-4 on April 6th, 2009. 

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Detail of one of the LHC's 18-kW 4.5-K refrigerator units, part of the larger cryogenic system used to maintain superfluid helium temperatures of about 1.9k (-271.25° Celsius or -456.25° Fahrenheit). Photograph taken on April 28th, 2008.

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The silicon strip tracker of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) nears completion. Shown here are three concentric cylinders, each comprised of many silicon strip detetectors (the bronze-coloured rectangular devices, similar to the CCDs used in digital cameras). These surround the region where the protons collide. 

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An automated magnetic tape vault at CERN computer center, seen on September 15th, 2008. The tapes are used to store the complete LHC data set, from which a fraction of the data is copied to overlying disk caches for fast and widespread access. The handling of the magnetic tape cartridges is now fully automated, as they are racked in vaults where they are moved between the storage shelves and the tape drives by robotic arms.

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Final work is done on the detectors inside the L3 magnet of the ALICE experiment on July 10th, 2008. 

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View of the CMS Detector before closure on August 17th, 2008. 

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Portrait of Lyn Evans, LHC project Leader, on December 3rd, 2008. 

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Shielding of the L3 magnet, ALICE experiment on July 10th, 2008 

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Final preparations on a replacement magnet ready to be lowered into sector 3-4 on November 27th, 2008. 

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A tunnel with part of one of the beam dumps of the LHC at point 6. Beam dumps are absorption mechanisms where the powerful beams can be extracted completely from the LHC, consisting of a 7m segmented carbon cylinder, 700mm in diameter, contained in a water-cooled steel cylinder, surrounded by about 750 tons of concrete and iron shielding. The sign at top warns of the presence of helium, argon and/or nitrogen in nearby pipes - gases that (if they leaked out) could displace oxygen and cause unconsciousness.

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Insertion of a Time Of Flight (TOF) module in the upper part of the spaceframe for the ALICE experiment. Charged particles in the intermediate momentum range are identified in ALICE by the TOF detector. The time measurement, in conjunction with the momentum and track length measured by the tracking detectors is used to calculate the particle mass.

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Detail of the LHCb Magnet, seen on September 5th, 2008. 

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A collimater for the LHC. The powerful LHC collimation system protects the accelerator against damage due to unavoidable regular and irregular beam loss. 

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View of the LHC machine in the tunnel at the junction part with the beam dump at point 6 on July 25th, 2008.

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View of the CMS Detector before closure, on August 17th, 2008.

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Last views of the L3 magnet before its closure on June 28th, 2008.

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Closing of the 30-inch-thick, 430 ton L3 door on the I side, ALICE experiment, on June 11th, 2008.

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A radiofrequency chamber of the LHC. Radiofrequency chambers give a kick to the protons once per circuit to increase their speed. Original here.

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A fireman examines emergency exit signage in the LHC tunnel on February 21st, 2008, during an exercise with French, Swiss and CERN firemen.

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Work on the ATLAS semiconductor tracker barrel. Precision work is performed on the semiconductor tracker barrel of the ATLAS experiment. The semiconductor tracker will be mounted in the barrel close to the heart of the ATLAS experiment to detect the path of particles produced in proton-proton collisions.

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Integration of the three shells into the ATLAS pixel barrel, the innermost tracking device of the experiment.

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Installing the ATLAS calorimeter in November of 2005. The eight torodial magnets can be seen on the huge ATLAS detector with the calorimeter before it is moved into the middle of the detector. This calorimeter will measure the energies of particles produced when protons collide in the centre of the detector.

®Trust God, he knows ur future. He may not reveal it to you but he will walk with you as the future unfolds. Don't trust the stars, trust the one who made them. Gud Day!.

Caves: The World Beneath the World!

Caves: The World Beneath the World!

If you are stretched and squeezed by everyday life, then you might be in perfect shape to explore caves.
Enter a narrow natural passageway that may lead to simply mind-boggling underground world. Caves may lurk right under your feet: a fascinating and unexpected environment, which is often known only to spelunkers and dedicated Gollum-seekers.

 

Back to the Cave!

Gruta do Lago Azul, Bonito, Brazil. (photo by www.alexuchoa.com)
"Symphony of Stones" (how aptly named) -

Garni caves in Armenia. (photo by eco culture)
Fairyland Cave Formations
Caves are a fairyland of delight, from the burning hot enclaves to the glacial ice mazes. Thousands of years of dripping water, eroding stone and budding minerals create a silent world of mystery and beauty... Graceful arches, giant crystals... silent but for the sound of water dripping and bubbling through.

A "Wishing Well" at Luray Caverns in Virginia (photo by Declan McCullagh)
The most common type of caves form when slightly acidic rainwater trickles into the crevices of limestone and gradually widens the cracks as it dissolves the stone. Centuries of water, supersaturated with minerals, dripping from cave roofs cause stalagmites and stalactites to form (see here).

(image via)
One thing to keep in mind during cave exploration: though these structures are made of minerals, they are generally extremely thin and fragile, many of them are quite rare, and can be damaged or destroyed by touch alone. Calcite (the mineral which forms many cave structures), for example, is soft enough to be scratched by a fingernail.
Some of the cave and rock formations:
- Flowstone (also known as a Bacon formation)
- Cave Pearls
- Soda Straws
- Helictites
- Anthodites (or Aragonite)
- Bottlebrush formation

(image credit: Dave Bunnell)
Probably the most comprehensive cave-exploration site on the net is that of Dave Bunnell... You can spend hours there, wandering around pages, cataloging whimsical underground structures, oozing rock and dripping stone.

(Gruta do Mimoso, Brazil)
Largest Cave Systems
We mentioned the Jeita Grotto - the largest cave system in the Middle East- in our recent Lebanon article. The longest known stalactite in the world is found there at 8.2 meters long.
- The deepest known cave is Voronya Cave in Abkhazia, Georgia and has been explored to a depth of 2191 meters.
- The longest continuous cave system yet explored is Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, covering 591 kilometers.
Let's have a short world tour of the most interesting caves, why don't we? We'll start with North America -
Already mentioned Luray Caverns in Virginia are full of celebrated speleothems formations, calcite crystals of abnormal shapes - all formed when the chambers were completely filled with water, highly charged with acid. The acid began to eat away the softer material, resulting in ornate pinnacles and arches...

(image credit: Alejocrux)

(image credit: Declan McCullagh)
One of the deepest known cave pits, Fantastic Pit in Georgia's Ellison's Cave descends 586 feet (179 meters) in a straight tunnel:

(image credit: Michael Nichols, National Geographic)
Glacial Caves and Ice Caverns
Some ice caves must rather be called "glacier caves", which can simply astound with the intensity of ice color:

(image credit: Jenna and Tim Dickinson)
Here is a wonderful page of ice caves photography by Jason Gulley:

(images credit: Jason Gulley)
No sign of Superman or Megatron there yet:

Mount Kenya's Ice Cave Bobby Model, National Georgaphic)

Ice Cave in Matanuska Glacier, Alaska - photo by George F. Mobley, National Geographic
A lot of ice caves grow "hair" - ice extrusions, some are quite strange-looking:

(image credit: Ian Mckenzie)
Brazil: Crystalline Underground Waters
Mato Grosso do Sul region in Brazil (and especially the quiet town of Bonito) boasts many marvelous underground lakes: Gruta do Lago Azul, Gruta do Mimoso, Aquário Natural. Intricate limestone formations and grottos hide the intensely-colored pools and waterfalls (many adventure tours there feature diving, some pools are more than 100 meters deep):




(images via)
Limestone caves in the same region offer fantastic exploration:







(images via)
Venezuela: Cave of the Ghost
Cueva del Fantasma is big enough for two helicopters to fly into it, but it's not technically a cave - rather, a collapsed gorge. It does, however, sport a huge waterfall right inside of it:

(image via)
Iran: tremendous cave system
Katale Khor is a cave dating back to the Jurassic period. It's one of the "snow caves" in the Southwest Zanjan province and connects to other caves - a huge underground infra-structure which can hide who knows what (definitely anti-American... wink wink). See more pictures here



(images credit: Ali Majdfar)
Can't get enough images of Iran's natural beauty? See our previous articles... a country full of great sights and dubious politics.
Vietnam: Hang Thien Cung cave
There are plenty of caves in Vietnam, and just like in China, many are illuminated with garish colors. (see here). But sometimes even artificial light takes back stage to the incredible rock textures:

(image credit: Tai Vo)
Mexico: Giant Selenite Crystals!
In 2000, one of the most unusual and splendid caves was found in Mexico by miners. Located only a mile from an upthrust of magma, this cave is 112 degrees Farenheit and at 90-100% humidity, limiting greatly the amount of time explorers can spend in it. It is a spectacular cave, with gigantic crystal formations thought to be 600,000 years old.



(photos by Javier Trueba / Madrid Scientific Films, image via)
The crystals formed underwater; as water saturated with calcium sulfate heated in the cavern selenite molecules crystallized and grew, undisturbed, to giant proportions. The cave was drained (by unknowing miners) in the 1980's and stopped the process of growth. Who knows what we may find further on, in the heat and water?
A description of one photographer's attempt to document this cave is here.


(images credit: Richard Fisher)
"It is unquestionably magical that the cool white rays of moonlight can originate deep underground in a black chamber that is, at least in my perception, white hot." (Richard Fisher, photographer, comments on the huge selenite crystals.)
A Giant Geode
Geodes are normally formed by volcanic or sedimentary geologic activity - a cavity in the rock is formed, inside which crystals begin to grow, such as amethyst, quartz or a number of others. Most geodes are small enough to fit in your hand, but this one is large enough to climb inside. The crystals found here are gypsum. - More info.

(images credit: Javier Garcia-Guinea)
The largest Geode Cave in US is located in Ohio: Crystal Cave, check it out.
Ancient Cave Cities
Khosrov Caves in Armenia served as a shelter to ancient tribes - in a perfectly cinematic location:

(image credit: 18:18)

(photos by Raffi Kojian and eco culture)
We wrote about Cappadocia cave city in Turkey before. But you might not be aware that more modern establishment makes its home there - a luxury hotel!

Considering how hot it can get outside, it definitely provides a welcome coolness:

(images via)
This PC case mod would fit right there, in that cave hotel room:

(case mod by Mashie)
Then again, there's a wildly original Stockholm subway station, seemingly built inside a natural (in reality - blasted) cave :

"Metro on Mars":