In order to tackle the vast amounts of data from the Large Hadron Collider, scientists around the world have collaborated to create the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid. It consists of 100,000 computers spread across 140 computer centres in 33 countries and was unveiled in October 2008.
The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) was originally created to process the huge amounts of data for the SETI at Home project (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence). It has since been expanded to offer distributive platform computing for a range of projects as diverse as mathematics, medicine, molecular biology, climatology, and astrophysics. BOINC currently has approximately 527,880 active hosts for this application on home computers worldwide, providing a massive average 5.428 petaFLOPS of computational power as of 8 August 2010.
The record for the largest simultaneous breakfast was set by 91,591 participants from the Centre for Health Education and Health Promotion, School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and The Chinese University of Hong Kong at 144 different venues around Hong Kong on 28 June 2002. A total of 5,495 kg (12,114.3 lb) multi-grain bread, 162,000 kg (357,148 lb) bananas, 11,000 litres (2,419.65 gal) orange juice and 22,897 litres (5,036.63 gal) of high-calcium soya milk was consumed.
The largest breakfast involved 27,854 people in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Nutella® (Ferrero, Germany) at the Arena AufSchalke, Gelsenkirchen, Germany on 29 May 2005. All guests were given a breakfast bag containing 2 bread rolls, 1 carton of orange juice, 2 portions of butter, 2 portions of cream cheese, 1 carton of yoghurt drink and 2 portions of Nutella®.
250 million years ago, all of today’s continents were joined together as one ‘supercontinent’, Pangea (means all lands in Greek). Around 180 million years ago Pangea began to slowly break apart due to plate tectonics, eventually leading to the land masses of today. Evidence of Pangea is immediately obvious when you see that the coastlines of Africa and South America seem to fit together.
The largest cookie mosaic measures 126.21 m² (1,358.51 ft²) and was achieved by The Bright School and MoonPie (USA), in Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA, on 29 September 2012. Over 300 students participated in building the mosaic using 16,390 MoonPie snack cakes to celebrate The Bright School’s Centennial year.
The largest cookery lesson involved 2,150 participants and was organised by Woolworths at Food Revolution Day 2014 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, on 16 May 2014. This event was also part of a global record attempt for the “Largest cookery lesson in 24 hours in multiple venues”.
Hydro power techniques of harnessing the energy created by moving water remains the largest contributor to renewable energy, reaching a capacity of 980 GW by the end of 2009.
The largest contract for any advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles (AMRAAM) is the $284-million (£114.6-million) deal by US manufacturer, Raytheon, to supply the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) with 200 Sidewinder AIM-9M – 8/9 and 500 AIM-120C5 AMRAAM missiles, which was announced in January 2007. This marks the biggest single export order in the history of the AIM-120 programme and gives the PAF a beyond visual range, active radar, air to air capability for the first time. The PAF’s F-16 aircraft will be armed with these missiles.
The largest cow bell ensemble involved 640 participants, in an event organised by Künstlerhaus Boswil (Switzerland) in Boswil, Switzwerland, on 6 September 2009. The event was made in conjunction with the Boswil show in Switzerland led by Paul Hamner of Johannesburg.