Every so often, engineers unveil a structure or device that looks more like it belongs in the Star Wars or Dune universes than the real world.
By Lachlan Haycock
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), at CERN, is one of the most complex pieces of machinery in the world.
Within the LHC exists the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, a particle physics detector which uses a solenoid magnet to bend the paths of particles from collisions from the LHC.
This is what it looks like – more akin to space-age speculative fiction than everyday life.
According to CERN, the CMS’s duties include studying the Higgs boson, and searching for extra particles that could make up dark matter.
But the CMS is only one example of human-made structures and machines that seem like they’re taken from an Isaac Asimov novel or Stanley Kubrick film.
Neon garden
Far from the first instance of ambitious engineering in the Garden City featured in create, the Gardens by the Bay complex in Singapore consists of 18 “supertrees” that combine concrete and steel with natural greenery to produce a distinctive visual identity when the structures are lit at night.
One of the supertrees acts as an air exhaust for conservatories nestled inside two of the structures, while almost a dozen boast solar photovoltaic cells in their canopies.
The structure is said to have inspired the planet Xandar in the 2014 film Guardians of the Galaxy.
Space laser
At first glance, it could be the Death Star from Star Wars, but it’s actually the Keck II telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
Seen below is the telescope as it projects a laser beam into the night sky to form an artificial guide star for adaptive optics.
Horror hotel
The 47-storey Atlanta Marriott Marquis hotel features an expansive atrium that, when completed in 1985, was the largest in the world.
It’s also a common filming location for big-budget projects such as the Hunger Games film series.
Earth excavator
Bucket-wheel excavators are massive, and one wouldn’t be out of place in a futuristic landscape.
The German-manufactured Bagger 293, in use at the Tagebau Hambach open-cut coal mine, is the largest terrestrial vehicle ever, but is crewed by just five people.
Desert energy
In the US, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System occupies a vast swath of the Mojave Desert plain.
Resembling something out of a Frank Herbert classic, the 386-MW project consists of three solar concentrating thermal power plants.
In a standout use case of heliostat mirror technology, heliostat fields focus solar energy on power tower receivers near the centre of each array.
Oil infrastructure
Back in 1988, part of the Bullwinkle oil platform, namely the steel jacket that gets partially submerged, was hauled into the Gulf of Mexico.
Four fifths of the broader structure sat below the surface.
Sky spire
The world’s tallest structure, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, deserves a mention on this list, not least for the astounding way it rises above buildings that in many other cities would be considered supertall.
The structure, which boasts a 200-m spire, could fit neatly onto the Star Wars planet of Coruscant just as easily as our own Earth.
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