Biggest Optical Telescope

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

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

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

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:

• Wikipedia
  
• Chicago Green Roofs

Libya circles

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

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

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