Back to the Arctics
Winter is the time to go to the.. ocean. When the weather is steadily below zero and the sun never rises above the horizon it is the high time. High time to go and see the auroras in the land of no-way-getting-there-in-the-summer.
There are no auto roads that way in summer. In winter there is small chance to get there. Even if you have suv or big gas goggler jeep you still can be sure in reaching the shores of the Polar Ocean.
Why people try to reach those salty frozen waters there? Maybe taking a look on the photos can give a clue.
Building A Metro
In St. Petersburg they have almost the deepest subway in the world, according to wikipedia: “The deepest metro system in the world was built in St. Petersburg, Russia. In this city, built in the marshland, stable soil starts more than 50 metres (160 ft) deep. Above that level the soil mostly consists of water-bearing finely dispersed sand. Because of this, only three stations out of nearly 60 are built near the ground level and three more above the ground. Some stations and tunnels lie as deep as 100–120 metres (330–390 ft) below the surface. However, the location of the world’s deepest station is not as clear”, however one of the St. Petersburgs stations is the world’s deepest one.
What a cool machinery they use when make dig for new stations:
Guarding Odessa
When entering city of Odessa port one can be greeted by a giant metal robot staying there for years already.
Constructed mainly of auto parts, like hoods etc. - so looking at it we might guess where from the Transformers idea might has appeared.
Big Molecular Toys
This team from Moscow, Russia is into making large scale molecular biology stuff as real world object toys, mainly made of plastic, but sometimes they are soft too.
It’s so geeky these days to go and buy yourself a 20 inch highly-detailed swine flu virus molecule or DNA helix made of plush for Valentine’s day or some other date like that instead the boring plush puppy and stuff.
Flying Over Moscow
That is how Moscow was photographed from a helicopter. Video is also possible. Wonderful panoramas… This time the helicopter was not too high, but 100-200m is not a problem at all.
Missile Forces Museum
There is a unique museum located on the territory of the former Soviet Union, and to be more precise, in Ukraine. In the museum there are displayed many exhibits of Strategic Missile Forces. There is no other museum of such kind in the whole world; except one that is located in the USA, but tourists are not allowed there and all the guided tours are prohibited. On this photo you can see intercontinental ballistic missile CC-18 “Satan.”
Russian Self Made Hummer
Recently we had a Russian guy from Kazakhstan who has built a Rolls Royce Phantom at home out of old Mercedes car. Seems that this trend is getting stronger. Now meet a Hummer car clone.
It can’t be called full replica as it is more likely a Russian approach for the Big Agressive Car that can be used to climb mountains, to sow and plough thru the fields, to clean snow and mud and even to… drive underwater.
“I have only one oxygen mask that can be used while you are driving by the bottom of the lake/river. Once we were crossing some lake and the car got stuck in the bottom mud. My passenger didn’t have a mask so he had to swim out to the surface to get some air and get back down to me to help releasing it.”, says the owner.
And yes, it can drive through the fire too! And now the pictures:
The Frozen-Explosion Power Plant
We were tracking closely the story of the Russian power plant exploded and then was examined by experts, and tried to be repaired. Then some estimates appeared that it may take up to ten years to get it back in full scale, and some doubted if it was worth at all.
And while these talks are going on, here is how it looks now after major frosts going on this winter it looks really interesting, like some kind of movie sets for you name it movie.
Oil Stones: A Soviet City in the Middle of the Sea
In 1940s and 1950s, right after the World War 2 Russia had to recover from the consequences of the Nazi invasion. Lots had to be done and as we know to complete something you need to have enough energy. And energy at that times as well as it is much likely now meant oil.
At that times the known oil reserves differed from what people in Russia know about it now. The main places to drill for oil was Southern Russia on contrary to frozen Northern Siberian regions as it’s for now. And the gemstone of the Soviet Oil production was Caspian sea region, mainly the territories that are an independent state of Aizerbajan now.
So after a massive attack of oil thirsty state the lands of this previously oil-saturated region little by little got exhausted of the black mineral treasure and the need for new sources of it arouse. Now it’s not clear who was that this genius who first came up with an idea of getting the oil right from the sea bottom where it was still plenty of it and for this purpose to build a real city 42 km (25 miles) off the coast right in the middle of the sea, but what we know is that this idea came into play and by some crazy chance it got support from that times Soviet leaders who leveraged it with the all support the biggest (by the territory) state could offer at that time. What this meant is that in a matter of just a few month a real town was built right in the middle of the nowhere on giant steel blocks coming from the sea bottom, from as deep as hundreds of feet down. And they called it “Oil Stones”.
Puschino Astronomical observatory
The first initiative to create big radio telescopes in the USSR is dated 1951. They were intended to observe the sun radiation and radiation of other space sources on centimeter and millimeter waves. (more…)
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