The World's Largest CMOS Sensor Is Recording Meteors at 60FPS [Sensors]

Last year, when we asked what could possibly need an 8-square-inch low light sensor, Canon replied with, "Space stuff". Totally proving them right, the Schmidt telescope at the University of Tokyo's Kiso Observatory now employs it to records faint meteors in the night sky.

The sensor already only requires 1/100th of the light as current sensors need. Not that you're likely to see this thing in anything other than a massive camera. But it can capture smooth video of space at 60fps. This could be what gives Bruce Willis enough time to mount an assault on an approaching meteor AND survive. [Peta Pixel]

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How the Nazis Sunk the Largest Underwater Treasure In the World [Video]

It was a dark, ice-cold February. The merchant ship SS Gairsoppa was seeking refuge in Ireland when a Nazi U-boat sunk her. She was loaded with seven million ounces of silver. That's worth $202.74 million in today's dollars.

According to the ship's manifest, she also carried 1700 tons of tea and a fair amount of pig iron. The Gairsoppa was on its way to Galway, Ireland, after leaving Convoy SL 64 because of low fuel. The convoy departed Freetown, Sierra Leone, on January 1941. Almost all of its 30 ships and ten escorts arrived to Liverpool on February 22. Some of them had to turn to other ports. Only the Gairsoppa was sunk.

Being alone at sea meant she was a good target for the Nazi sharks. A long-range German Focke-Wulf Fw 200 airplane found her at 08:00pm on February 16, 1941. About 14 hours later, the Kriegsmarine VIIB-class submarine U-101 commanded by Korvettenkapitän Ernst Mengersen spotted her on the open sea, 300 miles southwest of Galway Bay.

Mengersen, who you can see in the photo above wearing his Knight's Iron Cross, was one of the stars in the team of sea wolves created by Admirals Raeder and Dönitz. He sunk almost 70,000 tons of ships, most of them British cargo ships. He also sunk the HMS Broadwater, a Royal Navy destroyer.

After making contact with the Gairsoppa, Mengersen submerged his 66.5-meter-long U-boat—carrying 14 torpedoes and 26 mines—and prepared to kill the unsuspecting British ship. The commander ordered fire on the Gairsoppa's starboard side, sinking her in just 20 minutes. Most of the crew—88 sailors and officials, plus two gunners—died during the attack. As survivors of the initial barrage abandoned the ship, Mengersen mowed them down with the U-boat's machine gun. The only survivor was R.H. Ayres, the second officer, who reached the English coast 13 days after the attack.

Now, 70 years later, the treasure hunters at Odyssey Marine Exploration have found the Gairsoppa almost intact 4700 meters under water.

According to Odyssey, the seven million ounces of silver is "the largest known precious metal cargo ever recovered from the sea." They will keep 80%, while the British government would grab 20% of the total booty. They will start the recovery in 2012. The SS Gairsoppa had emergency stern steering which included a stern compass on the top of the poop deck. The binnacle housing the stern compass of the SS Gairsoppa shines in the lights of Odyssey's Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) during a visual inspection of the site approximately 4,700 meters deep.

Odyssey's crew is also excited by the finding itself. As Odyssey's Principal Marine Archaeologist Neil Cunningham Dobson puts it:

Being the son of a merchant mariner who worked for the same shipping line as the Gairsoppa's and as a former merchant mariner myself, the visit to the site via ROV was particularly personal. By analyzing the known configuration and research about the Gairsoppa and her final voyage and painstakingly exploring the shipwreck site to record each element and item, our team of experts was able to positively identify the site as the Gairsoppa. Even though records indicate that the lifeboats were launched before the ship sank, sadly most of her crew did not survive the long journey to shore. By finding this shipwreck, and telling the story of its loss, we pay tribute to the brave merchant sailors who lost their lives.

Indeed, it's exciting. Everything is exciting when there's seven million ounces of silver waiting for you. [Odyssey]

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World's Largest Sperm Bank Says They Don't Want Your Ginger Sperm [Wtf]

Cryos, a Danish network of international sperm banks and the largest one of its kind, has officially stopped taking sperm from redheaded guys. Despite an overall increase in donations, the demand for ginger sperm just isn't that high. Sorry, Matt.

Essentially, no one loves redheads sterile couples by and large don't want to make redhead babies. Cryos director Ole Schou even went on record to state that, unless a woman's partner was a ginger or she had a preference for red hair, he didn't see many people choosing red hair over other hair types. In fact, the only country where the specimens were running off the shelves was Ireland.

I just wonder how other hair colors factor into the mix. Platinum blonde can't be doing that much better can it? [Telegraph via Village Voice]

Image Credit: Alex Mit/Shutterstock

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The World's Largest Floating Vacuum [Video]

Constructing your own personal Skull Island? Don't waste time with some rinky-dink 80-year-old dustpan. This mammoth ship is too big to fit through the Panama Canal and can hoover enough soil to cover two football fields from 120 meters down.

A trailing suction hopper dredger (TSHD) drags a vacuum-like head behind the ship, which inhales loose material from the ocean bottom or riverbed, depositing the material in an on-board holding area, or hopper. Once full, the dredger will either dump this spoil through trap-doors in the bottom of the ship or pump it out of the hoppers via "rainbowing"—as you can see above—or through a pipe. TSHD's are extensively used in both maintenance dredging—such as with Victoria, Australia's controversial Port Phillip Bay project—and in land reclamation jobs—like creating the Palm Islands in Dubai.

Among TSHD's, Cristobal Colon is the largest—like, by a lot. Built in 2009 by Construcciones Navales del Norte, Sestao in Spain, the Cristobal Colon is the new marquee ship in the Jan De Nul company's burgeoning 1.8 billion euro fleet of mega-dredgers. It measures 223 meters long, 41 metes wide, with a 15 meter draft and weighs in at 78,000 tons. Its hopper holds 46,000 cubic meters of spoil—nearly 40 percent more than the previous record-holder, the Vasco da Gama—yet can still outpace the smaller ship, 18 knots to 16. This combination of superior capacity and top speed reduces the amount of downtime the Colon spends travelling to dump sites and unloading cargo.

In addition to holding more, the Cristobal Colon is also among the deepest dredging ships in operation today, with a maximum depth of 155 meters. This impressive depth is achieved through a novel implementation whereby the dual 6500kW dredging pumps—which provide enough electricity to light up a small town—are submerged under the surface rather than stored on-board. It employs two alternate heads—one for depths up to 80 meters and the other for depths up to the 155 meter maximum. A lightweight lattice structure provides support for the heads and helps protect the 1,300 millimeter feed lines. In less than three hours, this ship can collect enough spoil to bury an area the size of a football field under six meters of the stuff using its 16,000kW discharge pumps.

And while the Cristobal Colon is worth a king's ransom at 175 million euros, it was recently joined by a twin sister, the Leiv Erikkson in May, 2010.

Top art courtesy of Port Strategy

[Dredging Wiki - Bouwmaterieel.nl - Sand and Gravel - The Art of Dredging - Jan de Nul - Marine Insight]

Monster Machines is all about the most exceptional machines in the world, from massive gadgets of destruction to tiny machines of precision, and everything in between.

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World's Largest Water Balloon Fight Looks Incredibly Fun [Video]

The Christian Student Fellowship at the University of Kentucky organized what may be the world's largest water ballon fight; beating out previous efforts.

The event used 175,141 water balloons and involved 8,957 people. Judging by the video, everyone had a fantastic time. [UKCSF via Laughing Squid]

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