The Heaviest Things Humans Have Ever Built

From the Great Pyramid at Giza, to one-quarter of the Netherlands, to continent-spanning electrical grids, humans are great at making really BIG things.

Hosted by: @NotesByNiba (she/her)
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[Aziraphale]

'The Line' takes the cake for the single stupidest engineering idea I have ever seen in my entire life.

[sevenismy]

Your forgot the earth sandwich, made by someone in UK and Australia.

[BuildinWings]

You forgot our collective, ever-growing sense of existential dread.

[butterflygroundhog]

One of the biggest thing we have produced is landfills. Mining waste piles totalling billion tonnes, billions of cubic meters, but they are seldom counted in mass

[johnbeamon]

I feel like including the LHC and the national power grid begs the question how much do cities weigh. Mexico City and Tokyo probably weigh more than even that oil platform, but we're no longer talking about a single structure.

[NINE-UP]

2:08 “Nearly 4 million metric tons”
5 million metric tons is displayed on screen at the same time

[abcde_]

I was surprised to not see the Great Wall of China in here since it's the heaviest continuous structure humans have ever built, weighin about 50 million tons, almost 10 times that of the Great Pyramid.

[FerralVideo]

11:24 - We actually used to have compact particle accelerators on everybody's computer desk and living room! Old-school CRT monitors and televisions were, in fact, compact particle accelerators, emitting and accelerating electrons at a phosphorescent screen to create computer displays before we had today's flat panel LCDs.
They were also vitally important in early scientific research, and an extremely primitive version (Crookes Tube) helped us discover the electron.

[datacentre]

If you include interconnected networks of structures like the power grid, might as well also include road networks? All the interconnected pavement/concrete/bridges across Europe+Asia+Africa must weigh quite a lot.

[decoy]

With how outlandish some of the things they considered a single "thing" in this video I'm surprised they didn't say like "the subway system"

[Netsuko]

„The Line“ is one of the most stupid ideas ever convinced. Traveling to places will take forever because everything is always the farthest possible distance away. 170km in length? Good luck going ANYWHERE that is not within a few KM of your residence.

[truejim]

Technically, mass and weight are different things. As every physicist knows, mass is measured in grams, while weight is measured in yo’mommas.

[iordachebogdan]

im romanian and i miss romania so badly since i m both in exam season and study abroad. the bucharest bit was so unexpected and it made my day

[iderryan]

For the Romanian Parliament building, our host says 4 million metric tons, while the graphic says 5 million.

[TankleKlaus]

2:00 Audio says 4mil, the note on screen says 5mil - Which is it?

[michaelteegarden]

A big shout-out to the Practical Engineering YT channel by Grady Hilhouse!

[PLuMUK]

The weight of the electrons storing data is the same as a strawberry! 😱 my mind is officially blown!

[belladonnaRoot]

I take issue with including the line. It's...not built. And holy hell there are a lot of problems that will probably bankrupt the project before it's anywhere near this list. Not even counting the ethical or ecological ones.

[dustinerickson]

was this video about big energy or big weight? surely we could have discussed giant roadways, space vehicle transporters, the great wall, Ogenesson, ASPCA commercials during christmas.

[RustyDodd]

I don’t think you can say “probably definitely.”