If you’ve got even a tiny bit of megalophobia, this list will hit different—stick around to see which giant thing breaks your brain first!
TOP 10. The Comet Rosetta Chased—Compare It to Los Angeles!
Back in 2004, the European Space Agency launched the Rosetta probe to hunt down Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko—and it finally caught up in 2014. Shaped like two blobs stuck together by a "neck," this comet is roughly 4.3 km long and 4.1 km wide. Trust us, seeing its size next to downtown LA will make your jaw hit the floor! It started out in the Kuiper Belt, got its orbit messed with by Jupiter’s gravity, and comes as close as 193 million km to the Sun at its closest point.
TOP 9. A Typhoon-Class Submarine Slipping Past a Russian Beach
To go head-to-head with America’s Ohio-class subs, the Soviet Union launched Project 941—and out came the Typhoon-class nuclear subs.
These bad boys are 175 meters long, 23 meters wide, and tip the scales at a massive 48,000 tons underwater—making them the biggest subs ever built. They made 6 total; by 2013, most were retired and scrapped, leaving only the TK-208 Dmitriy Donskoy still chugging along.
TOP 8. Gordon Dam in Tasmania, Australia
Gordon Dam was built on the Gordon River in 1974. It has a curved top stretching 198 meters and stands 140 meters tall—Australia’s fifth-highest dam. Water drops 183 meters to spin the turbines, cranking out a max of 432 megawatts of power.
It’s not the biggest dam on the planet, but stand on the stairs leading to the top and look down? You’ll be clinging to the rail for dear life—total vertigo central!
TOP 7. A Giant Open-Pit Diamond Mine Next to a Russian Town
Mir Mine started digging up diamonds in 1957, and it’s grown into a monster—1,200 meters wide and 525 meters deep. In the 1960s, it was churning out over 10 million carats a year; in 1980, workers struck gold (well, diamond) with a 342.5-carat stunner—the biggest ever found there.
Open-pit mining stopped in 2001, and it went underground in 2009. Spoiler: It’s still pumping out diamonds today.
TOP 6. Dinosaur Footprints Found in Plagne, France
In 2009, the world’s biggest dinosaur footprints were found near Plagne, France. They’re 1.2 to 1.5 meters wide—meaning the dino that made them weighed over 30 to 40 tons and roamed Earth 150 million years ago during the Late Jurassic.
For reference, the biggest dino we’ve confirmed so far is Argentinosaurus—estimated to weigh at least 122 tons and stretch 130 to 200 feet long. Yeah, that’s huge.
TOP 5. America’s Longest Escalator
The Wheaton Metro Station in Maryland is home to America’s longest single-span escalator. It’s about 70 meters long with a 35-meter vertical drop—so riding it one way takes roughly 2 minutes and 45 seconds.
Because the station is super deep, it uses a setup where inbound and outbound trains are on different levels—kinda like some old London Underground stops.
TOP 4. The Event Horizon of the Universe’s 3rd Largest Supermassive Black Hole (That Tiny Dot Is Our Solar System)
This black hole is at the heart of blazar S5 0014+81, about 12 billion light-years from Earth. It’s 40 billion times the mass of the Sun, and its "point of no return" (aka Schwarzschild radius) is around 118.35 billion km—that’s 40 times the size of Pluto’s orbit!
Its accretion disk (the glowing stuff around it) is 300 trillion times brighter than the Sun. It’s the 3rd biggest black hole we’ve found; the top spot goes to the one at the center of quasar TON 618 in Canes Venatici, which weighs about 66 billion times the Sun.
TOP 3. An Abandoned Hydro Tunnel Under Niagara Falls—10 Floors Deep
The Toronto Power Generating Station on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls opened in 1906 and shut down in 1974. Its underground tunnel goes 10 floors deep—let that sink in!
At its peak, it could crank out 102,500 kilowatts of electricity. Now, it’s a National Historic Site—so you can visit (and marvel at how crazy deep that tunnel is).
TOP 2. Mexico’s Crystal Cave—300 Meters Underground
300 meters below ground in Mexico’s Naica Mine, there’s a cave straight out of a movie—the Cave of Crystals. It’s filled with massive gypsum crystals; the biggest ones are 12 meters long, 4 meters wide, and weigh 55 tons!
They took over 50,000 years to form, thanks to cold surface water reacting with sulfur ions from an underground magma chamber. Pro tip: The cave is brutal—58°C heat and 90-99% humidity. Without gear, you’ll last less than 10 minutes down there.
TOP 1. Delhi’s Ghazipur Landfill—The "Garbage Everest"
Ghazipur Landfill opened in 1984 and hit its capacity way back in 2002. By 2019, it was 65 meters tall (that’s a 20-story building!) and weighed around 13 million tons—by 2020, it was supposed to be taller than the Taj Mahal.
It’s a total ticking time bomb: methane builds up nonstop, causing frequent landslides and fires. After a deadly slide in 2017, they banned dumping… but since there’s no other place to put the trash, it started right back up. Yikes.
