Structures

The city of Chiang Mai, founded in April of 1296, was once a capital city protected by a powerful defensive wall, surrounded by a square moat. Although most of the inner wall has since been destroyed, some of it still…

Just when my non-scientific brain had recovered from writing the recent LIGO post, my co-writer Noel kindly informed me that there are two similar gravitational observatories in Europe: GEO 600 in Germany and VIRGO in Italy. GEO 600 (Wikipedia, official…

These two huge L-shaped structures visible at a very low zoom level are the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) facilities in Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford, Washington. Each arm of the structures is 4km in length, making them longer than the…

The village of Hampi is a site of Hindu pilgrimage and the location of the former capital city of the Vijayanagara empire. Its temples and ruins are a World Heritage Site collectively known as The Group of Monuments at Hampi.…

In the Spanish town of Mejorada Del Campo, former monk Justo Gallego Martínez has devoted the past 50 years of his life to constructing a cathedral, all by himself. After contracting tuberculosis as as a young man, Don Justo promised…

We can't always be perfect right? Even some of history's best architects made mistakes when they designed some of the world's most beautiful structures. Maybe the ground was too unstable, or adding another 20 meters to the top wasn't such…