A 21.94m (72ft) condom was fitted over the Obelisque in Place de la Concorde, Paris, France on 1 Dec 1993 to mark World AIDS Day. The condom was funded by Italian clothes firm Benetton.

The main asteroid belt lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It contains between 700,000 and 1,700,000 asteroids that are at least 1 km across, and many millions of smaller bodies. The total mass of the asteroid belt is equivalent to just 4%o of the mass of Earth’s Moon, with around half the mass of the whole belt accounted for by the four largest asteroids.

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.

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.

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 copper sulfate crystal weighed 69.8 kg (153.88 lb) as of 21 July 2010. It was grown by 8th form students at Kurfurst-Ruprecht-Gymnasium in Neustadt, Germany.

Cyclotrons are a type of particle accelerator in which charged particles, such as protons, are accelerated using a high frequency alternating voltage. The particles move in a spiral so that they meet the same accelerating voltage numerous times. The largest is the 18 m diameter machine at TRIUMF, the Canadian lab for particle and nuclear physics. The protons inside this cyclotron travel 45 km as they spiral outwards, gradually reaching their maximum energy of 520 mega electron volts. The TRIUMF cyclotron has been in operation Continue reading →

The largest department store is the Shinsegae Centumcity Department Store which covers an area of 293,905 m² (3.16 million ft² ) and was built by Shinsegae Co. Ltd in Busan, South Korea, on 26 June 2009. The Shinsegae structure contains floor upon floor of designer names representing everything from fashion to books and from kitchenware to toys. It also contains a beautiful spa, a relaxing roof garden and an impressive 60 tee golf driving range.

From its two geosynchronous satellites, WorldSpace broadcasts digital radio channels to Africa, Asia and Europe with a total surface area (footprint) of 80 million km² (30.8 million miles²). Its first satellite, Afristar, began broadcasting in October 1999 and then Asiastar began after its launch in March 2000. Its third satellite, Ameristar, is due for launch in the near future.