Big Small Planet

La Tomatina, Buñol

2008-08-26T23:30:00.005+07:00

Tomorrow, on 27th of August, a Spanish town Buñol will gather for the yearly Tomatina festival.
Like on any festival, guests from all around the world will enjoy live music, food, drinks, and fireworks. But at about 11 am several trucks will bring tons of tomatoes to Plaza del Pueblo, the center of the town. Everyone in the streets will run towards the trucks and tomatoes to fight in a tomato battle. During the fight, most of bars and cafes are closed, and people wear minimum of clothes.

In 2008, as La Tomatina official website says, 40,000 people will participate in the battle where 120,000 kilograms of tomatoes will be launched and destroyed. Six trucks will be carrying them from the town of Castellón Xilxes. The trucks will distribute the tomatoes over Paseo de San Luis, Calle del Cid, the Piazza del Popolo, and Avenida del País Valencià. You can find these streets in Google Maps.

There are only few rules of the battle. They are automatically translated from Spanish, so may not be too accurate :)

If you come to La Tomatina, respects the rules.
This year's Tomatina is celebrated on August 27, 2008.
La Tomatina begins at 11 am, there is a rocket that announces the start of the battle, an hour, another rocket indicating that the battle is over.
The tomato, which is mature, must be crushed by hand before launching it.
You should not enter bottles or any object that might cause accidents.
You should not either break or launching shirts.
You must be careful to the passage of trucks.
In the second shooting of housing should be left to launch tomatoes.
These small rules of civility and coexistence are necessary for the feast takes place as every year, ie without any kind of problems.

View in Google Maps

Tskhinvali

2008-08-10T22:48:00.006+07:00

There will never be this town of Tskhinvali, capital of self-declared South Ossetia.

View in Google Maps

Note that Google removed all roads and towns from Georgia in Google Maps - now it's just one big blank country.

New Google Imagery For Beijing Olympics 2008

2008-08-06T01:10:00.007+07:00

New Google Earth imagery provides access to the latest shots of Beijing Olympics stadiums, sports centers and other buildings of the Olympics 2008.
New images cover Beijing, Tianjin, Hong-Kong, Shanghai, Quingdao, and Shenyang. Some of the images were made just on July 19th, like the image of the Olympic Sports Center Stadium below.

View in Google Maps

It is worth to mention that the 3D Building layer already contains some 3D models like the Beijing National Stadium below.

Total Solar Eclipse

2008-08-01T23:51:00.004+07:00

No words can describe this

Biggest Optical Telescope

2008-06-18T22:03:00.005+07:00

The biggest and most powerful optical telescope is located in Arizona on the top of Graham mountain near Safford, Arizona. The 600-ton $120 million Large Binocular Telescope has two 8.4 meter mirrors equivalent to single telescope with a main mirror of 11.8 meters.

Large Binocular Telescope in Wikipedia

Find in Google Maps

Biggest Swimming Pool

2008-06-18T21:36:00.005+07:00

This swimming pool in Algarrobo, Chile is about 1 kilometer in length and contains 250 000 tons of sea water. Fernando Fischmann, owner of the San Alfonso del Mar resort where this pool was built, now offers anyone to beat his own record. His company Crystal Lagoons can build a similar lagoon anywhere on Earth for just about $350 000 per hectare.

View in Google Maps

Yurtas in Mongolia-2. Gobi

2008-05-01T00:19:00.007+07:00

Mongolian deserts and steppes are the most sparsely populated places on Earth. Wikipedia lists countries by population density and Mongolia yields only to Western Sahara, Falkland Islands and Greenland.

That's why meeting a human being in Mongolia can make you real happy. Even in Gobi desert, there's plenty of people living in yurtas and ranching cattle. I'm not sure what they all eat in the desert but hopefully there are some snacks.

This place in Google Maps

This family has a pretty large herd and you can see a cattle-pen. All such yurtas settlements (there are more than a dozen of them in this area and you can recognize them by dark spots in Google Earth that are actually sheep's dung as they say in Google Earth forum) are interconnected with roads - indeed, that's just gravel.

If you look at this region, you can see a town called Tugrug at South-West. Tugrug is Mongolian national currency and it also happens to be a town's name. There are several yurtas nearby the town and even in the town, next to stone buildings. This fact proves that many people are so adjusted to rural and nomadic lifestyle that they won't leave their yurtas even in cities.

Town of Tugrug, Mongolia (in Google Maps):

Chicago Green Roofs

2008-04-16T20:49:00.004+07:00

Here's a green roof of Chicago City Hall, as featured on Discovery Science. This 20,000 sq. ft. green roof demonstrates all benefits of having plants on tops of buildings such as cooler temperature in the building, less rain water, less CO2, and just visual pleasure.

Link to Google Maps

Read more about green roofs:

Libya circles

2008-04-16T13:17:00.007+07:00

Similar to Russian oil industry, farmers in Libya (which is right in the middle of Sahara) use vast areas of the planet to survive in the tropical climate.

These circles that brought many discussions in Google Earth community are huge 500 meter in diameter agriculture fields that use groundwater for irrigation.

According to NASA, the green circles serve as a good landmark for austronauts on the ISS.

Libya agriculture project in Google Maps

Oil explorations in Russia

2008-04-15T14:23:00.006+07:00

If you point your Google Earth to Russian North, you will see terrain covered with white straight lines. That's not a top-secret military network nor actions of aliens - that's just one of the largest oilfield on the Earth located near Surgut and Nefteyugansk.

Taking a closer look...

View this in Google Maps

Reality vs Google Earth

2008-04-13T23:03:00.006+07:00

Seems like there's no much difference between what you can see on a plane and sitting on your chair at home. You don't get any turbulence but you're not getting anywhere as well.

Dahab, Egypt taken from plane:

Dahab, Egypt in Google Earth:

Dahab in Google Maps

Enisey Ship

2008-04-13T22:53:00.007+07:00

Here's a ship that goes up the Enisey river in Siberia, in about 1730 km (1074 miles) from Krasnoyarsk. Navigation in this area starts only in June and finished in early October. Probably, this ship goes from Dudinka to Krasnoyarsk. A round trip for container vessel like this one from Krasnoyarsk to Dudinka and back to Krasnoyarsk takes 17 days (including loading and unloading in ports).

This place in Google Maps
The ship in Google Earth

Multinational Force and Observers

2008-04-13T00:50:00.004+07:00

This is an observation post of the Multinational Force and Observers peacekeeping troops on Tiran Island in Red Sea. Check the drawings on the rocks: it reads Ranger and there are images of an eagle, bull head and elephant (?).

This place in Google Maps
MFO in Google Earth

Singapore Roofs

2008-04-12T00:54:00.004+07:00

Singapore looks too much different from above. I think that's because cars are almost banned there and air is very clean. This is some storage facility, as you can see there are lots of trucks. A person who came up with such design and colors must have been a real artist.

This place in Google Maps

Johnston Atoll - WTF?

2008-04-12T00:45:00.004+07:00

Well, this one is interesting: an airport in the middle of the ocean. Johnston Atoll: a home for high altitude nuclear tests. If you open it up in Google Earth, you can see on some pictures that it used to be a pretty fun place with dorms, diners and a golf course. But now it's all covered with burnt grass and completely forbidden...

View in Google Maps

Driving in Mongolia

2008-04-12T00:22:00.005+07:00

Mongolia again. This time it's winter and someone is have real fun driving on the ice of Marrat Lake. With roads being really awful in Mongolia, this should be a true relief, to drive on flat endless ice.

There are some more paths - just look for them along the shore.

View in Google Maps

Yurtas in Mongolia

2008-04-11T23:59:00.003+07:00

My first post is about my wonderland - Mongolia. In this picture you see 2 yurtas (those white round things) and some construction nearby at a shore of Marrat Lake. Looks like there's a herd pasturing at the right.

There are many isolated yurtas in the area. Distance between them is from 0.5 to 2 kilometers.

See in Google Maps

Yurtas in Google Earth