Hasta La Gadget!

Ugly and sometimes frightening, the largest “gadgets” on Earth help mankind achieve the magnificent. Take, for example, the airplane above, whose hideous looks have earned it the nickname Oscar Meyer Wienermobile. Mock it all you want, but that wiener can carry more cargo than your puny human body ever will.

Last month, Wired.com presented nine of the largest machines roaming the planet. Many of you commented with even better suggestions for enormous gadgets that we somehow missed. We’ve compiled them here, along with several more mechanical marvels we found. In this gallery, you’ll see a machine that simulates earthquakes, a Ferris wheel that takes you as high as the clouds, a giant telescope that keeps an eye on our universe, airplanes that help make space exploration possible, and more.

Boeing 747 Large Cargo Freighter

The mustard-yellow Boeing 747 Large Cargo Freighter (above) transports aircraft parts to Boeing from suppliers all over the world. Also called the Dreamlifter, this plane is a modified version of the commercial 747, also known as the Jumbo Jet. The original 747’s length, height and fuselage (i.e., main body section that holds cargo) were expanded to haul more cargo by volume than any airplane in the world. (One can only imagine how many actual Oscar Meyer wieners the Wienermobile could transport.)

Photo: Drewski2112/Flickr

NASA’s announcement on Friday that the LCROSS moon probe discovered significant water ice at the lunar south pole is fueling colonization hopes, Space.com reports. The idea is that someday humans could either colonize the moon, exploit it as a source of minerals, or use it as a launch pad to stage further space missions unhindered by Earth’s atmosphere.

For now, scientists are just concentrating on where they can find more than the equivalent of a dozen 2-gallon buckets of ice water already found, the report said. But in turn, it’s leading to a private moon race similar to the existing one for reusable spacecraft.

Researchers figured out how to simulate a miniature black hole in a lab–though fortunately for us, it’s not going to eat the Earth, as Space.com reports.

“The device we created is not a real black hole, but only a device to mimic the black-hole effect,” said researcher Tie Jun Cui, a professor at Southeast University in China, in the article. “Actually, the device can trap and absorb the electromagnetic waves which hit the device. Hence we call it as the Electromagnetic Black Hole.” Essentially, the pseudo black hole sucks in light, but not mass.

The team “built the black hole” (I love my job) out of circuit board, by linking 60 concentric circular layers etched with copper patterns, the report said. In turn, the patterns interact with electromagnetic waves. That means the device, as a result, absorbs any incoming light that’s in the microwave range of the spectrum–but not any mass. (Image credit: Cheng/Cui/Arxiv)

Get ready to duck (again). The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, has now reached an operating temperature of 1.9K–colder than outer space itself, according to Ars Technica.

That means the LHC will soon be ready to begin crashing particles together, after a catastrophic failure and series of repairs over the past year took the accelerator out of commission.

The current prognosis is that the LHC will begin operations sometime in the next five weeks. It will accelerate particles at speeds very close to the speed of light. In effect, they’d run around the 16.7-mile length of the accelerator over 11,000 times per second, the report said. That necessitates the accelerator contain a vacuum that’s an order of magnitude less dense than the moon’s atmosphere. In other words, this is tough stuff, so let’s give those guys a break about that whole catastrophic failure thing. (Image credit: CERN)

After finding over 370 extrasolar planets over the past 15 years, scientists have confirmed the first Earth-like rocky planet outside the solar system, according to CNN.

To date, known exoplanets have been gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. That doesn’t necessarily mean the recently discovered rocky planet, called COROT-7B, can support life. While its composition may be similar to that of our own planet, COROT-7B orbits very close to its star, the report said. The planet’s daytime temperature at the surface could reach over 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, while its nighttime temperature may drop to 328 degrees below zero.

Astronomer Artie Hatzes said in the report that the star-facing side of the planet was likely molten, while the back could be icy. “We think it has no atmosphere to redistribute the heat,” he said, adding that astronomers “would never have dreamed” of finding a rocky planet orbiting so close to a star–close enough that its entire “year” is shorter than one of our own 24-hour days. (Artist credit: ESO/L Calcada)