We live in a world filled with more wondrous things than can be experienced in a single lifetime. Luckily for those of us with a natural aversion to sunlight, some of those things have been constructed inside gigantic buildings, by people with a burning desire to one-up nature. We're talking about things such as ...
#7. Super-Kamiokande: This Shit Was Obviously Built By Aliens
Univ. of Tokyo
Welcome to Super-Kamiokande, a gigantic subterranean water chamber built in Japan to detect neutrinos. What the hell are neutrinos? Well, they're subatomic particles that physicists believe are constantly zipping around the universe. Since they don't interact with other matter, they just pass right through whatever they come into contact with -- neutrinos emitted from the sun are passing through the Earth as we speak. Hell, one just went through your left eyeball and straight out the back of your head, probably. Did it itch?
So, what the hell does that have to do with this?
Univ. of Tokyo
Both make you scratch your eyes?
Well, the problem with detecting neutrinos is just what we said: They generally don't interact with other matter. One exception to that is water -- when a neutrino smacks into a water molecule, it gives off a tiny flash of light. In fact, the light is so tiny that, in order to detect it, you need a chamber capable of holding 50,000 tons of purified water and lined with myriad photomultiplier tubes. The result looks like a stage lighting system designed by Spinal Tap and assembled by Stanley Kubrick.
Univ. of Tokyo
It's so friggin' bright that it will make you see space babies.
That's not the only problem, however. Since the effects researchers are trying to observe are so very infinitesimal, they're often overpowered by cosmic rays and other such interference. To combat this, the detector is located more than a half-mile below ground. That didn't protect it from itself, though: Back in 2001, the pressure from all of that water caused one of the photomultiplier tubes to implode, setting off the most expensive chain reaction this side of the Death Star.
Super-Kamiokande was soon patched up, and, although it proved the existence of neutrino mass way back in 1998, it's still being used to research the history and evolution of the universe to this day. Or, all of this neutrino nonsense is an elaborate front, and this thing is really used to open a portal to some hell dimension. Guess we'll find out eventually.
#6. Dubai Mall: A Stereotypical '80s Dad's Worst Nightmare
Dubai Mall
Just a stone's throw from the world's tallest tower, Burj Khalifa, stands the world's largest shopping mall, Dubai Mall. It has everything you would expect a mall to have. Stores? Well, yeah -- it wouldn't exactly be a mall without at least 1,200 of those. A food court? Sure -- it's got enough food to feed a small country (or one family on a TLC reality show). It also houses a five-star hotel, which, in turn, has its own spa and five restaurants. It's when you move beyond the obvious mall stuff that this place begins to get downright ludicrous.
Dubai Mall
Please do not tap on the glass (or you will flood the entire Middle East).
There's also an aquarium so big that it "holds the Guinness World Record for largest acrylic panel." There's a water fountain show that can be seen from more than 20 miles away. There's an amusement park inside the mall, as well as a full-sized Olympic ice hockey rink.
Dubai Mall
Dubai is now more equipped to host the Winter Olympics than Russia.
The mall even has its own "resident dinosaur" -- a fully legit 155-million-year-old skeleton of a Diplodocus because why the ever-loving fuck not?
Dubai Mall
They shipped it in from Wyoming. No shit.
In total, Dubai Mall encompasses 12 million square feet -- that's more than twice the size of Vatican City. And the most insane part? There are plans to expand it because it's simply not goddamn big enough, yet. The first phase of the expansion is already underway, with the second phase reportedly involving an actual, live dinosaur to terrorize visitors who don't spend enough.
#5. Shigeharu Shimamura's Indoor Farm: Making Traditional Farms Look Like Shit
Kyodo/AP
Imagine you're standing in 2011 Japan, surveying the devastation left in the wake of the tsunami. What would you do? We know what we would do: We would fill our drawers with a relentless stream of liquid terror poo. Shigeharu Shimamura, on the other hand, is apparently immune to such humanly fears. Instead, he surveyed what looked like the aftermath of a vengeful god dick-slapping a Sony semiconductor factory and said, "Yep, I can use that to solve world hunger."
So, his company Mirai Industry Co., Ltd. transformed the factory into the world's largest indoor farm, and, according to the figures, they're off to a damn good start: It's 100 times more productive than traditional dirt farming, uses 40 percent less electricity, 99 percent less water, and wastes 80 percent less food.
Philips/BBC
And it's 200 percent more rave-worthy.
The farm's LED lights are a shade of fuchsia best described as "violent," which tricks the plants into optimizing their day/night cycles for the optimal rate of photosynthesis (that's science-speak for "it makes stuff grow real fast"). There are 17,500 of these high-tech lights in the farm's 25,000 square feet of garden beds. Shimamura and his company assure us that eating something that's been this aggressively pinked will not, in fact, transform us into a race of Hello Kitties.
Continuing with our numbers theme, the farm yields a massive 10,000 heads of lettuce every day, allowing a single installation like this to comfortably feed a small nation (if said nation consists of rabbits). It's also pesticide -- and bacteria -- free, which explains why the workers appear to have stepped straight out of The Stand.
General Electric
That, and to protect them from the spit of mutant plants.
Similar farms have been built by Mirai in Mongolia, and more are planned in Russia and Hong Kong. So, while they haven't saved the world yet, the future's at least looking bright for our BLTs.
Caliber Biotherapeutics
"That section over there is for our bacon plant expansion."
#4. Basilica Cistern: A Vast Underground Lair Straight Out Of A Video-Game Level
Clint Koehler
If this cavernous underground reservoir looks like something out of a video game, that's because it is. It was featured in Assassin's Creed: Revelations, as well as in the movies From Russia With Love and The International, and Dan Brown's novel Inferno. And it's not hard to see why.
LWYang/Flickr
It's also a perfect wedding spot, if you don't mind getting hitched in hip waders.
Built in A.D. 532 to store water for the Great Palace in Istanbul (still Constantinople back then), the cistern was largely forgotten about -- you know, as tends to happen with a 2.4-acre underground palace capable of holding more than 21 million gallons of water. Frenchman Peter Gyllius rediscovered it in 1545, after watching locals retrieve water through holes in their basement floors by lowering buckets through them. Sometimes, the buckets even returned bearing carp, which the locals presumably thought were gifts from the well fairies.
Graham Bould
It's an actual, honest-to-goodness wishing well ... if all you wish for is carp.
The fish are still there today, freely flopping among the hundreds of giant stone columns. And, speaking of the columns, two of them are propped atop intricate Roman carvings of the head of Medusa. One is positioned sideways, and the other is upside-down, possibly to prevent Medusa's glare from turning unwary visitors to stone -- or possibly because the Byzantines viewed Roman masterworks as little more than fancy cinder blocks. It's also entirely possible that no one's yet figured out which item from their inventory to use to spin them right-side up and unlock a secret passage to an ancient Byzantine treasure hoard.
Serif Yenen
Guess you'll just have to murder the shit out of that giant medusa head.
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