Newest World's Tallest Living Man by Guinness World Records

For three years in a row, Sultan Kosen has been named the world's tallest living man by Guinness World Records. Interestingly, he's earned this lofty distinction at three different heights. Even more fascinating, in the last three months, the 29-year-old Turkish man has only recently stopped growing thanks to receiving state-of-the-art treatment in the U.S.

Kosen first entered the record books at 8 feet 1 inch; at his next measurement, he was listed as 8 feet 2 inches, and now he's achieved his ultimate adult height at 8 feet 3 inches. He's also in the record books for having the largest hands (11.22 inches) and largest feet (14.4 inches).

The gas platform that will be the world's biggest 'ship'

Shell has unveiled plans to build the world's first floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) platform. The 600,000-tonne behemoth - the world's biggest "ship" - will be sited off the coast of Australia. But how will it work?

Deep beneath the world's oceans are huge reservoirs of natural gas. Some are hundreds or thousands of miles from land, or from the nearest pipeline.

Tapping into these "stranded gas" resources has been impossible - until now.

At Samsung Heavy Industries' shipyard on Geoje Island in South Korea, work is about to start on a "ship" that, when finished and fully loaded, will weigh 600,000 tonnes.

That is six times as much as the biggest US aircraft carrier.

By 2017 the vessel should be anchored off the north coast of Australia, where it will be used to harvest natural gas from Shell's Prelude field.

Once the gas is on board, it will be cooled it until it liquefies, and stored in vast tanks at -161C.

Every six or seven days a huge tanker will dock beside the platform and load up enough fuel to heat a city the size of London for a week.

The tankers will then sail to Japan, China, Korea or Thailand to offload their cargo.

"The traditional way of producing gas offshore was through pipelines. You brought gas up to a platform and piped it to the 'beach'. That is the way it's done in the North Sea," said Scotsman Neil Gilmour, Shell's general manager for FLNG.

The World’s Biggest Ships:

• The Seawise Giant was the biggest ship ever built. Fully laden it weighed 657,000 tonnes. It was scrapped in 2009
• Shell refers to its FLNG platform as a "facility" rather than a ship - fully loaded it will weigh 600,000 tonnes
• Daewoo are building 10 Triple-E container ships for Maersk. Weighing 165,000 tonnes, each can carry 18,000 containers
• The Titanic, in comparison, weighed a measly 52,000 tonnes. It sank on its maiden journey in 1912

'Cyclone alley'

But the Prelude gas field is 200km (124 miles) from Western Australia's Kimberley Coast and there are no pipelines there to be used.

Johan Hedstrom, an energy analyst in Australia with Southern Cross Equities, told the BBC: "The FLNG concept is an elegant solution because you don't need so much fixed infrastructure.

"You don't need the pipeline or the onshore refinery and when you run out of gas you can just pull up stumps and go to the next field."

Mr Gilmour said Shell had to overcome a "raft of technical challenges", ensuring for example that the vast amount of equipment on board would work in choppy seas.

The Prelude field is in the middle of what is known as "cyclone alley", an area prone to extremely stormy weather.

But Mr Gilmour said the vessel had been built to withstand category-five cyclones and even a "one-in-10,000-years' storm" producing 300km/h (185mph) gusts and 20m-high (65ft) waves.

The double-hulled vessel is designed to last 50 years.

When the Prelude field is exhausted, in 25 years' time, it will be completely refurbished and packed off to start work on another field off the coast of Australia, Angola, Venezuela or wherever.

Mr Hedstrom said: "FLNG is a neat way of going forward. The way that energy prices are going it does look like a good industry to be in and I think they could make a lot of money out of it."

The price of LNG has risen markedly as demand has increased.

LNG currently sells for $14 per one million British thermal units in Japan, where the price was boosted by the tsunami, which cut the production of nuclear power.

The project, estimated to cost between $8bn (£5bn) and $15bn (£9.5bn), could provide 3.6 million tonnes of gas a year.

Flaring off

Nick Campbell, an energy analyst with Inenco, said Shell's move into FLNG was a "smart move".

"Shell are positioning themselves in an emerging market, not just in China - where gas usage has increased by 20% - but in India, which is also increasing its demand," he said.

The project is expected to generate 12 billion Australian dollars (£8bn) in tax revenues for the Australian federal government and could benefit their trade balance by 18 billion Australian dollars over the life of Prelude.

Australia's Minister for Resources and Energy has welcomed the Prelude project, drawing attention to the reduced environmental footprint as compared with a land-based scheme.

But there has been opposition from environmentalists. Martin Pritchard from Environs Kimberley says he is concerned about the potential for "oil leaks and spills".

WWF Western Australia, meanwhile, argues that the underwater wellheads and pipelines will harm the tropical marine environment, and estimates the project will emit more than two million tonnes of greenhouse gases per year.

The gas raised from the seabed is purified during the process of liquefaction, and waste products will be flared off. This week the Australian government said it would tax carbon emissions from major polluters at A$23 (£15) per tonne.

But Mr Gilmour says the Prelude project could be the first of several. Shell has already identified the Sunrise gas field in the Timor Sea as having potential for FLNG.

The ship, whose first section will be laid in 2012, has no name. Shell normally refers to it merely as a "facility".

"There are only four or five dry docks globally which could have built this facility and there are certainly no yards in the UK large enough," says Mr Gilmour.

He has been to Geoje Island and, speaking in a broad Ayrshire accent, he said of Samsung's yard: "It's an extraordinary place.

"It's just a phenomenal yard. Samsung is very hi-tech, world class. There are going to be some very spectacular images coming out of there during the building process."

Source: BBC News

Antarctica Tops the List of Coldest Places on Earth

Antarctica takes position number one among the coldest places on earth. Mostly uninhabited except for penguin and seal colonies found along the coast, Antarctica has practically no match on the temperature department. At the Plateau Station, temperatures can easily plummet to -119.23° Fahrenheit (-84° Celsius) and the annual average temperature barely reaches -32.8°F (-36°C). The record as the coldest place, however, goes to Vostok Station, Antarctica, where the temperature reached -129°F (-89.4°C) on 21 July 1983. Scientists are the only humans to live on Antarctica for months at a time, and even they do it only in summer.

Of all inhabited areas, one of the coldest places in the world is Siberia. Although global warming has taken a toll on Siberian winters over the past decade, it's normal for temperatures to reach -60°F (-51.1°C) in January. Oymyakon, in Eastern Siberia, has an average winter temperature of -49°F (−45°C), and may have reached a low of -96.16°F (-71.2°C), although the official record is -90°F (-67.7°C). The little village is home to 900 permanent residents, who endure winter for nine months out of the year, and considered -30°F (−34.4°C) "balmy." The area is so cold that empty plastic bags taken outside will freeze within minutes and then crack like glass.

Outside of Russia, the prize as one of the coldest places goes to Greenland, where the cities of Northice and Eismitte frequently see temperatures of -50°F (-45.5°C). The Yukon, Canada, falls close behind by only a few degrees. In the US, one of the coldest places is definitively International Falls, Minnesota, where temperatures normally reach -32°F (-35.5°C) in winter. Prospect Creek, Alaska, has broken several records in the American continent, including reaching -79.8°F (-62.1°C) in 2003.

To survive in the coldest places in the world, humans have had to adapt their environment and lifestyle significantly. Everything freezes at such low temperatures, from electronics to gasoline to pen ink; batteries lose power and pipes crack under the pressure exerted by ice and snow. In Ojmjakon, children are not allowed to play outside for more than 20 minutes at a time during a typical winter day. At -60°F (-51.1°C), their lungs can freeze and collapse. Despite all the difficulties, humans have found a way to change the environment and survive. Many of the coldest places in the world now attract tourists that are eager to see, at least for a few days, what real winter is all about.

Check out the Video to know the Coldest Places in World:

Antarctica tops the list of coldest places on earth, with one spot recording a bone-chilling -129F. By comparison, the US record of -80 seems downright warm.

Source: wiseGeek and Yahoo WhoKnew

It Fell from the Sky

It Fell from the Sky: 

The Tunguska Event

Though it flattened all the trees in every direction for 30 miles, the airburst that took place over Siberia's Tunguska River left no crater behind. Scientists theorize that the blast, caused probably by a meteor or comet fragment that exploded a few miles over the surface of the Earth, was 1000 times as powerful as the bomb that fell on Hiroshima, Japan.

Otherworldly Object

It is believed that the Willamette meteorite crashed to the Earth somewhere in Canada, but that it was shifted by a glacier south to Oregon, where it was discovered in 1902. It is the largest meteorite found in the United States, and the sixth largest in the world.

Impact Crater

Gosses Bluff, near Alice Springs, Australia was formed by the impact of a meteor or comet about 143 million years ago. It is one of the approximately 170 terrestrial impact craters on the Earth's surface.

Hole in the Desert

Much smaller and younger than Gosses Bluff, Arizona's Meteor Crater is also known as Barringer Crater, in honor of Daniel Barringer, the man who first suggested it was formed by the collision of a meteor with the Arizona desert around 50,000 years ago.

Curiosity

Two Saudi men examine a two-ton meteorite embedded in the sand of the Kingdom's desolate Empty Quarter.

Meteor Shower

A time-lapse photograph captures the trails of two meteors in the sky over Amman, Jordan. The red streaks at the mid left and bottom right are meteors; the white streaks are stars. Most meteors disintegrate in the intense heat created from entering the Earth's atmosphere.

Ring Shaped Reservoir

Water from a series of hydroelectric projects has filled Manicougan Crater in northern Quebec to brimming. The resulting lake and the island in its middle are sometimes called the "eye of Quebec."

Vast Expanse

It is believed that when Gosses Bluff crater was originally formed, it measured over 13.5 miles in diameter. After 143 million years, much of it has eroded away, leaving an exposed 3-mile wide formation.

Close Encounter

The Ahnighito Meteorite, at New York's American Museum of Natural History, is one part of a much larger meteorite that fell to Earth (landing in Greenland) thousands of years ago. Even so, at 34 tons, it is the second largest meteorite in the world.

Concentric Rings

Aorounga Crater, in the Sahara Desert, northern Chad, is approximately eight miles wide. It is believed to be several hundred million years old.

Twin Craters

The Clearwater Lakes near Hudson Bay in Quebec were probably formed by a binary asteroid, a system of two asteroids bound to each other by gravity. This photograph was taken from aboard the Challenger space shuttle in 1985.

Man and Crater

Earth experiences from one to three impacts large enough to produce a 12.5-mile diameter crater about once every million years, on average.

Source: Time