World's Largest

Calling all Tesla fans! Electrical engineer Greg Leyh and his team at the Lightning on Demand organization (LOD) in California are raising the funds necessary to build the world's largest twin Tesla coils (ten stories high, about 120 ft/37 m) that will be capable of generating electric arcs more than 200 feet (60 m) long. Dubbed the "Lightning Foundry," the project currently consists of a working 1:12 scale prototype. When complete, a towering pair of coils will fill a football field-sized area with massive electric bolts that researchers hope will reveal some of the mysteries of this beautiful but deadly force. Read More

With the curtain coming down on its Space Shuttle Program, NASA has set its sights on the future with the announcement of a heavy-lift launch vehicle that is designed to take man beyond the moon to explore near-Earth asteroids, Mars and its moons, and beyond. Dubbed the Space Launch System (SLS) its configuration harks back to the Saturn V rocket-based systems employed to propel Apollo astronauts to the moon but also incorporates technology developed in the Shuttle Program. Read More

Since its completion in 1963, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, with a diameter of 305 m (1,000 ft) and a collecting area of 73,000 square meters (790,000 sq ft), has been the largest single-aperture radio telescope ever constructed. But Arecibo is set to lose its title with construction now underway in Guizhou Province in southern China of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). Upon its expected completion in 2016, FAST will have a surface area of over 195,000 square meters (2.1 million sq ft) and will be able to see more than three times further into space and survey the skies ten times faster than Arecibo. Read More

LEGO's Technic line has been inspiring future engineers for around 30 years with kits that give kids of all ages the ability to create more advanced models than the standard LEGO blocks. LEGO has now teamed with Mercedes-Benz to create a Technic model based on the multi-purpose Unimog U 400 truck, which Mercedes calls "the world's most versatile workhorse." Comprising 2048 parts, the 1:12.5 scale "Universal-Motor-Geräts (tool)" model will be the largest LEGO Technic model ever released. Read More

Mitsubishi Electric will unveil a huge, 19.7 foot (6 m) wide OLED globe at Tokyo's National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation on June 11. Billed as the world’s first large-scale spherical OLED screen, "Geo-Cosmos" is made up of an aluminum frame covered with 10,362 tiny OLED panels, each measuring 3.7 x 3.7 inches. The sphere will display images of clouds and other views of the Earth coming from a meteorological satellite as it hangs almost 60 feet (18 m) above the museum floor. Read More

Offshore wind power specialist Vestas has revealed plans to build the largest dedicated offshore wind turbine in the world. The proposed V164 would have a 7.0 MW capacity, twice that of its predecessor, the 3.0 MW V112. The awesome 164 meter (538 ft) diameter rotor would eclipse the size of the current titleholder, the prototype G10X installed by Gamesa in Spain in 2009 which has a diameter of 128 m (420 ft). Read More

Korea’s Daewoo is to build the world’s largest ship for Mærsk line. The US$190 million, 400 meter ‘Triple-E’ class behemoths will carry 18,000 TEU containers, 2500 more than the current largest, Emma Mærsk. Superior economies of scale will enable the new monsters to surpass the industry record for both fuel efficiency and (20% better) CO2 emissions per container moved. In a move set to impact global shipping transport costs and efficiencies, ten Triple-E ships will go into service between 2013 and 2015 with a further 20 ships optioned. If the same number of containers were loaded on a train, it would be 110 km long. If they were stacked on top of one another, they’d reach beyond the stratosphere (47 km). Read More

NASCAR fans are in for a high-definition treat this year at the Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina, where construction of a gargantuan 200-foot-wide x 80-foot-tall screen is underway. Billed as the world's largest HD video board, the structure will weigh 332.5 tons (665,000 pounds) and contain more than 9 million LED lamps when the switch is flicked for racing events in May. Read More

Currently, the world’s largest capacity wind turbine is the Enercon E-126, which has a rated capacity of 7.58 MW. It has held that honor since its introduction in 2007, but is under threat of losing the title with a number of 10 MW turbines currently in development – including what was destined to be the world’s biggest wind turbine to be built in Norway. Now a Spanish project has upped the ante with its aim of building an offshore wind turbine with a capacity of 15 MW. Read More