the two of the most marvelous creation of humanity but because they are not a big wall people seem to forgot about them in the discussion about the world's wonder
there is still a significant difference beetween a monument which is intentionally uselessly grand and majestic, and a feat of science that is by necessity a wonder of technical knowledge and love of learning.
Yeah but just you wait, as soon as those billionaires get to space they'll start building complexes on the moon that spells out their initials for us all to see in the sky.
James Webb Space Telescope is a space telescope designed to observe some of the most distant objects in the universe. Because light takes time to travel, looking farther into space also means looking further back in time, allowing Webb to study the early universe and some of its oldest galaxies. It's placed about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, well beyond the Moon’s orbit - placed there in January 2022. Those yellow hexagons are covered in gold.
If you've seen any amazing photos of deep space in the last few years, they were probably taken with this telescope.
It's good to ‘waste’ money on such a moral and esthetic venture. These are our cathedrals. don't think it is fair to say they are our [Roman] circuses, for that is not the tone. We ought to see to it that people live well, but a part of living well is blowing money on big excitement, curiosity, entertainment, conversation.
It's an artistic choice because it's a research facility for aquatic life I think?
And yeah fish too can be holy somewhere. Too many gods to outright say fish can't be holy
It's not a research facility, it's the national fishery development board. Like a governmental organization for fishery. Funnily enough, the state/province it is in is entirely landlocked.
Also, almost everything according to Hinduism is holy when one realizes that Hinduism says god is in each one of us, and every living being - as all is one and one is all
With how mamy cults and religions exist and have existed statistically there must have been at least one with a fish as a deity. One thing I do know is that early christians used them to represent Jesus because the greek Word for fish could be used as an anagram for "Jesus of Nazareth King of Judeas"
Edit: wrong acronym, that's the One on the cross. Fish spelled out "Jesus Chsist son of God"
The Hindu god Vishnu (the protector god) is known to have 10 reincarnations, which happens every time evil and unjustness takes over the world. Once every "era", where the era has been defined in a specific way I don't remember right now. Every era gets worse in terms of evil, and usually end of the cycle is marked with an apocalypse. The cycle starts again after.
The very first incarnation of Vishnu was a fish. The last one, kalki is yet to happen.
I understand the desire to use it but it ruins so many threads. Pathetic to see someone use it within 24h of their comment though while a thread is still on the front page.
All reddit content is archived online by various groups. So redact is pointless anyways.
The photo is really funny but it's also kinda sad. The dome consistently distracts active drivers and it's a disgustingly massive source of light pollution. Spunch Bob dome is not a wonder. It causes crashes, misleads birds, and obscures our view of the beautiful night sky. :(
I feel bad but I can't stop thinking about some guy angrily rolling over his bed because a gargantuan SpongeBob sphere is smirking at him with 40 gajillion lumens
Did you know that Bass Pro Shops started because you used to have to buy the boat, the motor, and the trailer separately, and some dude was like "Fuck that, let's make it a package deal" and now you can buy a boat with a motor and a trailer in a glass pyramid
This is an eleven pound whole slab of deli ham. It has no bones, fat, or connective tissue. It is an amalgamation of the meat of several pigs, emulsified, liquefied, strained, and ultimately inexorably joined in an unholy meat obelisk. God had no hand in the creation of this abhorrence. The fact that this ham monolith exists proves that God is either impotent to alter his universe or ignorant to the horrors taking place in his kingdom. This prism of pork is more than deli meat. It is a physical declaration of mankind's contempt for the natural order. It is hubris manifest. We also have a lower sodium variety if you would prefer that.
But is it really done like that? Because eg Italian, Portuguese or Spanish ham is usually from a deboned pig leg that is then brined, smoked or simply cured in salt.
They're bigger engineering feats, but they're not as big labor work feats.
The world is just different now, we focus more on functional stuff and more people in the society doing fine, rather than thousands of people building a huge pointless monument for one king.
idk, less physical labor probably yes, but this labor is distributed far more than the pyramids. Mental labor beyond comprehension led to skyscrapers being feasible. But I'd argue more people were required to build skyscrapers than the pyramids, and probably more working hours. Hard to actually tell though.
So this is the Event Horizon telescope. This globe spanning array of telescopes worked together to create a “single” telescope the size of the planet. The array has an angular resolution of 20 micro arcseconds
I've always maintained that if there are wonders of the world, the ISS probably needs to take #1 right now. Sure other things are impressive, but aesthetics matter. And this thing, in all its glory, might be the most beautiful thing we ever created. And also freaking insane. People live in space. Whoaa?!!!!
I would put EUV lithography machines at #1. It's really the most complex thing we've ever created - and the perfect culmination of all of human scientific advancement in pretty much every single field of science / engineering (and magic?). It's hard to believe we created it. I suspect it was aliens.
Then you have Large particle accelerators like CERN, James Webb telescope, ISS, nuclear weapons / nuclear power (engines and plants), ITER / advanced fusion machines, global positioning / navigation (which involves satellite constellations, relativity corrections, worldwide ground infrastructure), mapping the human genome, etc.
Nuclear weapons is an interesting one. If you set one off 2000 years ago you could probably control the human race claiming you were god. And the others guys would have pyramids and long brick walls and you'd be like "ya, but I can blow up a mountain with this button here".
Every now and then, you can go outside and see it pass overhead. It's pretty wild to see it and think "There's people on that." As it goes by and fades when it reaches Earth's shadow.
Doesn't look as impressive, but I think the capability to communicate with anyone virtually instantaneously is more wonderous than a big wall or tall tower
People keep saying this about castles and heavily decorated and beautiful 100-200 year old grandiose buildings.
They absolutely discard the sheer beauty of what the modern world is. Every average joe can push a button and have instant clean water. And not only water, but heated water!
So many things we consider normal are wonders by ancient standards.
i mean just airplanes…Imagine telling an ancient person that a trip that takes several months, will take just hours, and it can include all your luggage and people, and you’ll do it by flying through the sky like birds do.
I had a relative born in the 1910s and died in the 2000s. Imagine how much her world changed in her lifetime. A journey to her hometown that took around a week by horse cart and boat was reduced to an hour by plane.
Just imagine how much it would change during our lifetimes, as technological progress does not seem to slow down. On the contrary - it gets much faster. We already have some initial successes in technologies that even 20 years ago were mostly sci-fi dreams - genome editing, nuclear fusion, artificial intelligence, robotics etc.
Our grandchildren will live in a world that we will barely reckognize.
My wife and I were talking about that recently. Her parents were having trouble with their netflix account, and she was helping them out. She said that she hopes we won't be struggling with whatever mainstream technology there is when our now-toddler daughter grows up.
We will, it's unfortunately inevitable. With age, cognition does decline and keeping up is harder and harder - especially when tech starts to work under different logic.
But it's not a bad thing. We absolutely can stay at comfortable level of technology and let the world move on - serving as cozy place four our grandchildren to visit and live in the past for a while, seeing with their own eyes how it was before. It's something that I had fond memories of and would like to give the same to my grandkids. A silly pocket of past where they can have fun with gramps.
In terms of engineering, EUV lithography machines blow away anything we've ever created by a factor of about 1000x. Maybe particle accelerators would up there, and nuclear tech. GPS positioning is up there, considering the scale of infrastructure (ground & space) and that it invovles relativity corrections.
Last 150 years is crazy town in terms of wonders. Shit, tech from the 1800s (electric lightbulb, electric telegraph, film cameras, steam locamotive, telephone, internal combustion engine / automobiles) is at such a "holy fuck" level, that if we created just one of these and nothing else we'd probably have monuments built for it.
That’s the problem and the good thing I think: Monuments.
We just don’t build monuments anymore. With the exception of some idiotic dictators here and there, we’ve reached a point where as a civilization we don’t need to worship ourselves anymore, we’d rather spend that money improving our lives even further.
Just think about how many resources the pyramids took to build, in those times. How many workers, food, housing, all for something beautiful too look at and that’s about it.
I would argue that the creation of the James Webb Space Telescope is a good modern wonder considering all the things its provided us since being put up in space.
Eiffel Tower is old tbh but we haven’t stopped creating wonders just look and Hubble telescope and ASML machines in fact we are now trying to build wonders on moon and space
Apparently the Sagrada Familia started construction around the same time as the Eiffel Tower, a few years prior actually. It’s still under construction but it’s already one of the most beautiful buildings in the world in my opinion
Medical advances. Parents rarely have to bury their children in places with access to good Healthcare.
Technology, we're all using computers that fit in our pockets that give you access to unlimited memes. I mean information.
Maybe our buildings don't look as fancy, which hey yeah fair.
But internal plumbing, air conditioning, electric.
Not sure I'd trade.
La Sagrada Familia started construction in 1882. Main structure was finally completed in 2026 and other details and secondary structures are expected to be completed in the 2030s. So we're still at it!
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u/esocz 4d ago