What are the most interesting "world's largest ___" that are around the world?

 Apparently as far as Iran is considered, bigger is better.

Iraq may have the largest cemetery in the world, but Iran has the largest shopping mall in the world.

The Iran Mall is located in Tehran, Iran, and is currently 15 million square feet.

To put that in simpler terms, this behemoth is the size of 260 football fields, all put together. It is over double the size of the previous biggest mall, which is the South China Mall.

What exactly will you find in this massive shopping complex? Nothing much, just…

• Three food courts with over 200 restaurants.
• 700 shops.
• A book garden with 67,000 volumes of books.
• A 215,000 square foot hypermarket.
• A 129,000 square foot ice rink and swimming pools.
• 12 IMAX theaters.
• A 5-star luxury hotel with 450 rooms.
• A roofed amusement park.
• 15 sports fields.

And many more miscellaneous features, from things as mundane as a museum to things as interesting as a permanent car showroom; this place has it all.

Oh, and by the way, this shopping mall was introduced in 2018, so it’s still pretty new. In fact, all those shops and restaurants and car showrooms? Those are just the first phase. The second phase will add another 6 million square feet and who knows how many more facilities.

My question is, how long until this “shopping mall” has to be classified as a city…

What are the most interesting "world's largest ___" that are around the world?

 This is the world’s largest restaurant.

Most people don’t know about it as it’s in the most unexpected place; Damascus, Syria.

It’s called Bawabet Dimashq which translates to Damascus gate.

It served different types of cuisines including Indian, Chinese, Iranian, and, of course, Syrian and Middle Eastern cuisines. It had 6 themed sections and many decorative features such as waterfalls, fountains, replicas of famous archaeological ruins in Syria, and a big children’s playground

It had the potential to serve 6014 guests all at once. It occupies 54000 square meters. The kitchen itself is 2500 square meters. During the peak times in the summer there would be around 1500 employees to serve the customers that could reach up to more than 4000 at once.

The restaurant’s kitchen was said to resemble a mini production factory. The equipment and the preparations’ dynamics made it possible for each chef to serve up to 30 of the popular dishes such as hummus in one minute which means a plate was filled every 2 seconds.

Even though it was quite successful back in the day, it has been closed since 2012 as the area was affected by the armed conflict and was occupied first by the opposition fighters and later by the military forces who used the abandoned restaurant as a base for their operations.

I went there once with my family in 2005 as it was famous for being the biggest restaurant in Damascus. I had no idea at the time it was the biggest in the world. We only heard about that in 2008 after the owners had contacted the Guinness world records. I was shocked to know that. I knew we loved food and gatherings, but I didn’t expect it to be to that extent.

What I found even more interesting when I was reading about the restaurant is the fact that it had a unique piece of a meteorite on display that supposedly fell down in Siberia in 1947. It had been in the possession of the Soviet Union before it was purchased by the restaurant’s owner, Shaker Al Samman, in exchange for 15 million dollars.

Odd, I know. He must’ve been obsessed with standing out using his wealth. First with the restaurant and then by this.

Anyway, now since the conflict had cooled down, I’ve heard there are a few restaurants in that area getting refurbished and might re-open soon. So, who knows? The biggest restaurant in the world might be open to the public again soon.

It’s worth mentioning that Damascus used to receive a lot of tourists during the summer, especially from Arab Gulf countries since its weather is cooler and it’s a cheap tourist destination. So 4000 visitors were achievable for a restaurant of that size and fame.

Which is the largest aircraft in the world, and is it possible to land that in all airports?

 Not even close.

The largest aircraft in the world is the Antonov AN-225 “Mriya”.

Photo from Reddit

This behemoth has a landing distance of 2,400 meters when empty. That is around 1.5 miles, or about 2/3 the length of Central Park in New York.

Now that that’s covered, the world’s shortest commercial runway is Juancho E Yrausquin Airport, Saba coming in at a whopping 1,312 feet long, or about 400 meters.

Photo from Charismatic Planet

The 225 would touch down and promptly fall into the ocean on the other side of the runway. It would probably be safer to ditch in the ocean beside the airport.

Without using the runway above, there are many, many regional and municipal airports where the 225 simply could not land. For instance, Skyline Airport in Idaho has a runway length of only 400 feet. It is so small, I couldn’t find a picture of it. Either way, the AN225 is 275’ long, over half the length of the airport’s runway. No matter which way you cut it, the 225 isn’t going to be landing there anytime soon.

What is the largest object in the universe?

 A question of how big something can be.

When speaking about the biggest object in the universe, you must always remember galaxy IC-1101.

Why don’t we see how big it actually is?

Milky Way:

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is 100,000 light-years across, with an estimated 400 billion stars in it. 100,000 light-years would be 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers across. Now, let’s see how long it would take you, to cross it, with humanity’s fastest spacecraft. Let’s start with the math. As stated earlier, the Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light-years across, each light-year is approximately 6 trillion miles, and for us to cross just one light-year, it would take us nearly 20,000 years with humanity’s fastest spacecraft New Horizons. Unrealistically, It would take you a wopping 2 billion years to cross our own galaxy with the fastest thing we have.

Andromeda:

The Andromeda galaxy has more than twice the amount of stars than our galaxy has (one trillion to be exact), and is 2.5 million light-years away from Earth. Now, this galaxy is about 140,000 light-years across, compared to 100,000 light-years the Milky Way. Doing the same math, it would take you 2.8 billion years to cross it with the exact same spacecraft, without adding the time it would take you to get there.

Now here ‘s where things get big:

IC 1101:

This galaxy is approximately 1.2 billion light-years away from Earth. It has 100 trillion stars, making literally a dot of the Milky Way, and the Andromeda Galaxy. This galaxy is 50 times the size of the Milky Way, and 2,000 times as massive. Doing the math, it would take us a mind-boggling 100 billion years to cross that galaxy. I must confess I was getting pretty excited while making this answer.

We are as tiny as we can get.

How far did the largest known artillery gun fire?

 The Schwere Gustav is the best in the world of extreme engineering. This wasn’t just a big gun. It was an indication of what occurs when power is a more important factor than common sense. Gustav, a Krupp construction, was approximately 1,350 tons. That is no weapon--that is a factory upon wheels.

It was too big to be dealt with on ordinary ground. Gustav was not only forced to sit on two parallel railway tracks in order to function. It was 107 feet in length, its barrel 800mm in caliber, or broad enough to swallow a manhole cover. Sacking it was not that easy either. What it required was more than 1,400 soldiers and engineers to transport, guard and operate the monster.

And what it fired wasn’t ammo. It launched small trucks that had steel-wrapped covers. Shells that were loaded with high-explosives weighed 4.8 tons and were able to strike 29 miles. The concrete-piercing rounds weighed 7.1 tons and could be used to penetrate reinforced concrete 23 feet thick before they blew up. You were finished, had it been upon your side. No debate.

The thing is, however, that Gustav was a nightmare. The assembling required weeks, it could not be concealed, and shouted in the air bomb me. It was strength that lacked elasticity. Big. Loud. Slow. An ideal representative of an age that thought that bigger was better- until reality showed it to be false.

Who was the most disliked member of the Nazi regime among the German population during World War II?

World War 2 was a difficult time not knowing which of the leaders of the Nazi party Germans disliked most. The government was highly strict.(Read Full)

What was the largest river that has ever existed on Earth?

The largest river to have existed in the last half a billion years might have been the Mega Congo-Amazon.

In the contemporary world, the largest river by discharge is the Amazon, but the Nile, by some measures, might be the longest, and over its length, there are some disputes. However, both of these rivers pale in comparison to the mega Congo-Amazon, which existed when South America was still connected to Africa in the Gondwana and Pangea supercontinents and might have been around 10,000 km in length, almost twice the length of the Amazon alone. It was home to huge dinosaurs and other fascinating Mesozoic creatures.

The drainage area of the Amazon today is about 7 million sq km, the Congo about 4 million, and the Nile about 3.4 million. The Mega Congo Amazon had a drainage area of around 12 million square kilometers.

The flow rate of the Amazon is about 210,000 m3/sec, and that of the Congo is about 40,000 m3/sec. However, for millions of years, the climate was much wetter during the existence of the Mega Amazon-Congo, and its discharge was likely much higher than the combined flow rate of the Amazon and Congo rivers in Africa and South America.

When these two continents split, both the Amazon and the Congo continued to flow from east to west—Congo towards the Atlantic and Amazon towards the Pacific Ocean, but 23 to 50 million years ago Andes started to grow rapidly, and 10 to 15 million years ago, they became large and tall enough to block the flow of the Amazon towards the west.

For millions of years, the water accumulated into a vast inland sea and swamp, the Pebas, in what is now Colombia, Ecuador, parts of Peru, and western Brazil. It discharged into the Caribbean in the north of modern-day Colombia. It existed for so long that indigenous and fascinating animals and plants evolved to live in it, only for their habitat to be destroyed when the Amazon found a way, via sandstone, to flow east towards the Atlantic 7 to 10 million years ago.

Some of the most fascinating animals of the Pebas were Purussaurus, a 10-ton, 10 to 12 meters-long crocodile with the strongest bite force of any known animal, stronger than that of T. rex. There were also filter-feeding crocodilians with duck-like bills. Stupendemys was a 3-meter-long, up to 1-ton turtle. Freshwater snails of the Pebas had thick shells of up to 40cm in diameter.

The mega Congo-Amazon River might have been the largest in the last half-billion years. Earth experienced many supercontinental cycles over its 4.5-billion-year history, and if larger rivers existed on older supercontinents like Columbia/Nuna, 1.8–1.4 billion years ago, or Rodinia, 1.2 to 0.75 billion years ago, we have no evidence of their drainage basins due to erosion. Older supercontinents were still too small to harbor such large drainage basins. Therefore, the Mega Congo-Amazon is the largest we have evidence of ever having existed in the history of our planet.

What is the weight of the largest buffalo that lived?

 Well, it depends what you mean by buffalo. In the most accurate sense, a “buffalo” is a member of the bovine subtribe Bubalina. Going by that definition, the largest-ever modern buffalo would be the wild water buffalo, which can weigh up to 1,200 kilograms.

However, if we consider extinct species, there were possibly larger buffalo. The identity of the Pleistocene bovine Pelorovis (left) is still poorly understood, but some suggest it was related to modern buffalo species. In any case, it weighed a massive 2,000 kilograms, partially due to its spectacular horns, each as long as a man is tall.

However, in North America, a “buffalo” is a species in the genus Bison, zoologically referred to as a bison. If that’s what you meant, then the American bison would be the largest of extant species, which can, on occasion, attain weights of 1,724 kilograms - albeit on farms where they are well-fed and cared for.

Again, when we include extinct species its crown is lost - this time to the so-called long-horned bison, Bison latifrons. With weight estimates of up to 2,000 kilograms, it competes with the aforementioned Pelorovis for the title of heaviest extinct bovid.

And… *sigh*… technically there’s a genus of fish called buffalo, Ictiobus. I almost know for a fact that you weren’t referring to them, but just to maintain accuracy, the largest buffalo fish are bigmouth buffalo, the largest of which reach lengths of 1.23 metres and 29 kilograms.

So there, WHATEVER you meant by buffalo, I can say that I’ve answered the question correctly. I might as well close with one of my favorite sentences of all; "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo". And yup, it is grammatically correct.

What is the largest thing in the solar system?

 

It's not Sun.

It's the magnetic field of Jupiter.

See, jupiter is a big planet, but looks puny against its magnetic field.

Charged particles in the solar winds stretch the field away from Sun, like a comet's tail.

It stretches 7 million km towards the Sun, and over a billion km in the opposite direction— Saturn orbits inside it sometimes.

If you could see the field from Earth, it would appear 5 times larger than a full moon.

Jupiter's magnetic field is roughly 20,000 times stronger than Earth's. What generates it?

Deep beneath the clouds, the pressure is so high that hydrogen is crushed to a metallic liquid, and conducts electricity.

This conductive ocean rotates around the core at high speeds. It generates electricity like a dynamo.

Jupiter's magnetosphere also creates stunning auroras. They're not larger than earth’s auroras, but larger than Earth.

What was the largest and longest supernova observed?

 Considering naked eye observation from the Earth, SN 1006 was definitely the brightest supernova event recorded in history. The number 1006 refers the year it was seen, a common way to designate supernova events. It reached a peak magnitude of 

$-7.5M$ and the reason it appeared as bright as quarter of Moon light is because, later it was found out that this Supernova is just (now a remnant) 7200 light years away. It stayed in the peak magnitude for two days, April 30th and May 1st, as recorded by the then Egyptian astronomer Ali Ibn Ridwan (Ali ibn Ridwan - Wikipedia). Later Chandra Observatory explored the faint X-ray signals from this Supernova remnant and it was confirmed to be a Type 1 supernova (X-Ray View of A Thousand-Year-Old Cosmic Tapestry).

But, if You extend the observation beyond the naked eye then there are two more important events that need to be mentioned.

Using the ASASSN telescope (All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae - Wikipedia), scientists discovered the most luminous supernova event (SN2015l). The event reached a magnitude of $-23.5\pm 0.1$ but from earth it was impossible to see with naked eye as the galaxy where this event took place is located around 3.8 billion light-years away (ASASSN-15lh: A highly super-luminous supernova). Just to give you an idea of the magnitude of this event we can draw a comparison. We all know that Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky and it’s about 9 light years away. If this supernova event would have happened at that distance then it would have blazed almost as powerfully as the Sun. If it were as close as Pluto then it would have eaten up the whole solar system. Now, as a student of Cosmic Ray (CR) science, these events are extremely useful as we believe that Supernova are the sources of CRs which hit earth from all direction every moment, and these events are proof that the Supernova explosions do have enough energy that they can act as CR sources.

Last but not the least, before SN 2015l event, there was one more interesting event recorded on 2006 which was the then most luminous event recorded (An extremely luminous supernova in the galaxy NGC 1260) with peak magnitude recorded at $-22$, where the galaxy NGC 1260 was 238 million light years away. To reach the peak magnitude from $-15$ to $-22$it took around 20 days, so definitely it was a long event.

This event was believed to be the result of the death of a massive star, like Eta Carinae (Discovery of the most luminous supernova ever recorded, powered by the death of an extremely massive star like Eta Carinae). Now if You don’t know Eta Carinae, check it out and it’s definitely one of the most interesting star which is 7500 light years away and believed to be exploding as a supernova soon.

Now if You recall the first event I mentioned SN 1006, the distance of the supernova was around 7200 light years away and the Supernova was seen from many different parts of the world, so we should expect to see the massive explosion of the binary system of Eta Carinae from Earth. So let’s hope for the best !

VY CANIS MAJORIS, one of the largest stars in the Milky Way

 When the French astronomer Jérôme Lalande first observed VY Canis Majoris in 1801, he described it as a seventh magnitude star like many others. Certainly, Lalande did not expect that this faint dot was actually a very bright red hypergiant and one of the largest stars in our Galaxy.

VY Canis Majoris is a star still shrouded in many mysteries, whose physical properties are little known.

One of the few well-known aspects is its variability: the star indeed varies its brightness over a cycle of 956 days, going from an apparent magnitude of 9.6 to one of 6.5, at the limit of visibility to the naked eye.

As for the distance, the value is very uncertain, but the best estimates suggest it is located 4000 light-years away from us.

From the spectrum of VY Canis Majoris, it has been found that it is an M-type star with a surface temperature below 4000 Kelvin, in addition to some information on the atmospheric composition.

From visible and infrared photometry, it has been derived that the star should be 350,000 times more luminous than the Sun, thus making it one of the most luminous stars in the entire Milky Way. The star, however, is surrounded by a shell of gas expelled in the past, which absorbs much of the radiation making it invisible to the naked eye from Earth.

According to the most recent estimates, the star is indeed expelling about 0.01 solar masses per year into space. Consequently, its current mass, estimated at 17 solar masses, is much lower compared to its original mass.

The estimate of the diameter of VY Canis Majoris is strongly influenced by the values assumed for the other stellar parameters and by the presence of the shell that surrounds it. Estimates of its size vary between 1400 and 2000 solar diameters, placing it in any case among the largest stars in the Milky Way.

In this artistic representation, the size of VY Canis Majoris is compared to that of the Sun and Earth's orbit.

Image Credit: Oona Räisänen.

What is the largest country that very few people know about or think about?

 Kazakhstan is large. :^)

The 9th largest in the world by area in fact at 2,724,900 square kilometres.

Arguably one of the more successful post-Soviet states, their PPP per capita is relatively high all things considered, beating out countries such as Turkey, Romania and Croatia. They also rank highly in terms of mineral and natural resource abundance.

But few know about Kazakhstan in the West, barring those with roots in the former USSR sphere of influence. Outside, they’re just known as “one of those stan countries”, or “BORAT”. The first time I met a Kazakh friend of mine through a mutual friend, she was surprised that I recognised the names of the different CA countries when we talked about where we were from (I already knew some friends from the area).

Kazakhstan also has a long and illustrious history being home to various nomadic cultures, even forming a Khanate of their own in the 15th century.

In fairness to those who don’t know or think about it, neither Kazakhstan nor the other Central Asian countries are often reported about in mainstream news, being overshadowed by the giants they have as neighbours, notably China, Russia and Iran.

World’s Largest Golden Temple

 Golden Temple Sripuram, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, BHARAT (India) 🚩

Dedicated to Shri Lakshmi Narayani / Maha Lakshmi. Built by Sri Narayani Peedam trust according to traditional Vedic architecture in 2007 & is Star-shaped (Sri chakra).

This temple is adorned with 1500 kgs of Gold which is double that of Amritsar’s Golden Temple.