@Skeptical_Geezer: If they build it like Taipei 101, just one ball, about 730 tons in size:

[www.popularmechanics.com]

EBone

ofcourse its a pyramid. those people build it in times, where a iron ruler was the pinacle of technology. for the rest people used, computers etc, but the ancient people had just ther brainbots.

ibunkun

Ok, so LHC gets my vote, but thats not the main reason for my posting.

I remember hearing about Disemvoweling at some point before, but wow. This is my first time seeing it in action and its AWESOME! Such a fun game! Wife® was just playing along side me to figure out what the comments said. Nice play Giz! A new warning AND a fun new game! w00t!

WildWon

Can we outlaw 1337 in comments? It gets anN0y1N'

nightsky

What, no option for "My Penis"?

After the LHC destroys the fabric of space-time it will get my vote. Until then, my vote would be for either the Pyramids or the Great Wall. Glad you only gave me one choice.

Monty

ISS FTW. Come on... Everything is 100x more complicated. Eating, sleeping, crapping, screwing (screws you pervs!)...

EVERY single thing needs to be looked at from million perspectives. For example, what happens to your farts in space?

Just thinking about being up there and only few millimeters away from the vacuum that will suck you through a pinhole is giving me goose bumps. I don't see how anything can compete with it.

future-proof

The Burj Dubai Tower. Building a building that size AFTER 9/11 takes balls the size of bowling balls!

Skeptical_Geezer

this is an human stuff contest...pyramids were made by aliens...

so, I'll vote on the Burj...I can imagine something that high....LHC is just like the subways..

alter

How can you even compare LHC and ISS to....buildings????

dc-united

@gordeaoux: the Pyramids did serve another purpose imagine if the pyramids werent built do you think anyone else would have tried to build something so massive.

Imagine being in Egypt when it was being built seeing a bigass building built when everything else it like 3, 4 stories at the max that would have got the imagination going overtime and could have got more people to try the impossible and the fact to get millions of people to go along with it and build the shit.

If you tried to build a damn Pyramid anytime from 1400-1900 you would get a big ass f you from your whole country plus a revolution.

utube2007

pyramids

Gaoulds land on them I mean come on...

twylight

@utube2007:

You're over hyping the pyramids. Of course they've lasted that long. They're made of a million tons of brick, yet how many people does it have room for? Around 2.

Jitty

@utube2007: Agreed. Call me when the others have stood the test of time for four thousand years.

EBone

LHC, it's one of the most massive man made structures in history. And the fact that it's so high tech adds to that.

Jitty

I like any potential doomsday device so LHC lighten up my day and bring the world in decade and doom ^-^

TBM-Fan

The Pyramids look at how long they lasted with 5,000 years with people looting the hell out of them and through all the storms it had to have been through. Plus look at back 5,000 years ago and think about how hard and time consuming it was to build it.

The International Space Station that shits going to crash to earth eventually

The Burj Dubai Tower wont survive 100 years without upkeep

The Large Hadron Collider how many people will ever see it compared to the Burj tower and the pyramids.

How about comparing stuff that was built in the same century to be fare they all have good and bad parts
but the pyramids will be the only one still standing 5,000 years from now.

utube2007

What about the Great Wall of China?

Twoje

Also, slaves werent used in the production of the pyramids. Citizens willingly constructed them to serve their king, and the gods.

War Eagle

I'm gonna go with the Intertubes. Cause how else would I get memes and cat pictures and pictures of cats with memes?

The pyramids and the Burj Dubai both only serve a small number of people, and only stimulate the imagination of the rest. The ISS and LHC could both stimulate science, but the LHC hasn't yet, and the ISS doesn't come close to the scientific accomplishments of the Hubble. And they all pale in comparison to the democratizing, informing, masturbatory, distracting, useful, accessible, empowering, pirating clusterfuck of brilliance and stupidity that is the tubes.

gordeaoux

The LHC: Because it is the most MASSIVE machine designed to study the SMALLEST of particles in order to help answer questions about the origins of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE.

chonnes

@Redwraithvienna: Its not the actual building that is impressive. It everything that made it possible. For the time getting that many people to work together to achieve something on that scale was unheard of.

War Eagle

I'll be honest it's a toss up between the LHC and the space station as both are much more monumental to human kind.

The pyramids and the tower are rich peoples way of stroking their e-peens without using the internet.

Spoony

Pyramids. It's impressive to build things for the betterment of humanity or for the glory of a country. It's another thing to build a colossal structure, using state of the art technology (at the time) and an immense amount of man hours and money to build a structure to stick a corpse in.

dry-roasted-peanuts

@ARP: You mean slaves?

chrisaroz

when hyder consulting builds their mile high skyscraper

[bldgblog.blogspot.com]

then maybe ill vote for them. but the burj is junk it doesnt achieve shit its just a building. the pyramids are pretty amazing but they dont create black holes...atleast that we are aware of yet. LHC LHC LHC LHC!!!!!

akiranimus

Pyramids, look how long they have lasted, how many of the others will last as long?

camel109

@n2runin1:

Ok...let me see you get those cranes off the side of that thing. Just those cranes being up so high impresses me.

sguth925m

@War.Eagle:

Actually not ... pyramids were around for 1000 years + when the big ones where built and if you know how to built a small one then its just a question to scale up.

The impressivness is in the logistics not in the building technology.

Redwraithvienna

- I'm almost sure that the ISS required the most original scientific achievements to make the whole thing possible.

- The LHC is "just" an even larger particle accelerator. I don't think it's much more sophisticated than the Fermilab accelerator. It is just bigger.

- The pyramids required the most physical work and human sacrifices.

- Well, I don't think that skyscraper would be any more than an even more expensive toy for a rich guy with an awful inferiority complex. The materials are given, softwares for architecture design are given... where's the scientific achievement? No where. Engineering achievement? Yes. Artistic achievement? Maybe.

zmd21

i would vote for "Not compareable" ... they are just too different imho. If you compare the pyramids with an other mausoleum ...ok ... or the LHC with the first Nuclear Reactor ... ok ... or the ISS with Mir ...

but this ? I dont know ... they are just all incredible but on a very different lvl ... with different ideas to back them up.

Redwraithvienna

Yep, for the time the pyramids were a greater technological achievement compared to the others. Just had a whole chapter about it here at Auburn.

War Eagle

mst.rsst.rg.t.sy.my.dck

mferrari

Pyramids 100 times over...

...until the LHC is actually revealed as a Stargate and takes us back to the creation of the pyramids... marinate on that!

George W. Braff

The question is answered by the motivations at work:

1.LHC-aims to understand the most fundamental building blocks of existence and further our understanding of the universe

2.Burj Dubai-aims to build the ultimate 'mine's bigger than yours' skyscraper. In my eyes, the motivator here is jealousy, pride/arrogance

3.ISS-gives the LHC a run for its money in terms of exploring the universe and understanding our role in it... I might say that the ISS is more impressive purely because it's... in space. And it is the culmination of decades of research in so many multi-disciplinary fields.

4.The Pyramids-If you wanted to measure the worth of a building in terms of excessiveness, frivolousness, pure self-infatuation, etc, then the pyramids top the Burj Dubai any day.

gloveofpower

ISS it is unique in this list as it is in SPACE!

Yeebles

The pyramids by far. With all the technology available constructing a building doesn't seem very impressive. We still guessing how the pyramids were built!

n2runin1

the pyramids arent even real

akiranimus

'd lk t Clld hr wth MY lrg hdrn, f y knw wht 'm syn.

ScottyF311

I will change my vote to the ISS if the damn thing ever stops breaking. But you can't get kudos for sustaining a human habitat in the lifeless vacuum of space if you can't actually sustain the damn thing.

So in the meantime, LHC gets my vote for its capacity to turn all of Earth into a lifeless vacuum (lets hope we've worked out the kinks in the ISS by then).

Hiphopopotamus

Can we put the LHC on the Burj to get a hi-tech Eye of Sauron. Because that would be about 6 six kinds of awesome.

OMG! Apple Stinks!

The LHC.
Incredibly tiny particles... moving very fast... hard to keep track of.

kcrochet

I lurves the hard-on collider.

However, if you can see the pyramids from the top of the Burj Dubai, I'd have to go with "teh Burj".

Minotaar

I'm w/ ARP.

Jackhole

Aimed correctly, the LHC could be a Al-Capwning weapon.

Eat proton!

kanon

Pyramids FTW- what they accomplished with the technology existing at the time.

ARP

Come on people, the hard-on collider is clearly the winner.

dna

The Piramids.
With the tech they had, I'd only vote on another thing if there was a "time travel machine" or "teleportation pod" option.

In 2000 years, we'll have LHCs in out pockets, while hopefully, the piramids will still be there and will still be impressive.

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

I'm gonna have to go with the pyramids for their sheer audacity. The others all have some purpose; they'll add something to their societies. The pyramids were just a show of wealth and power, making the expenditure of man and material much more impressive than the rest.

JXK089

@The Great Rodney McKay: Figured it out. It's La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

The Great Rodney McKay

@chrisaroz: Read and be enlightened. The part about the pyramids is near the end of the article.

[harvardmagazine.com]

I voted LHC, BTW. Not so much because for the tech going in, which is impressive to be sure, but for the information that will be coming out.

Babysealclubber

@Monty: That is what the LHC is for!

microe

@n2runin1:
I agree, but it goes even deeper than that. With the fact that it's made entirely of stone (and not very hollow), it would be a massive undertaking even with modern technology. We really don't see much in the way of true old-world stone construction anymore, and as a result we've kinda let the knowledge of how to do a lot of that stuff slip. Yeah, sure, if we really wanted to build a _new_ Great Pyramid, it would certainly be doable, but it would be a tremendous undertaking.

@Yeebles:
LHC is unique in that it's underground. The Great Pyramid is unique in that it's older than the other three listed constructs combined (even if you go by when they started designing them, rather than when they'll actually finish building any of them...and I count the fine-tuning of the LHC against it being "completed"). The Burj Dubai is unique in that it's probably the biggest total volume.

Purple Dave

I would even venture to say that church in Spain should be on this list, the one that's been ongoing since the late 1800's.

Anyone know the name of that thing? I can never remember.

The Great Rodney McKay

Seriosuly... the ISS... ITS IN SPACE. Putting an orbiting laboratory into space is more impressive to me than many land-based feats.

dtemp

Function and form, both, need to be weighed in. It is easier to build something on Earth where gravity and all those forces are second nature. building something in space is a different ball game. When shit happens, shit happens. Even though the ISS cannot directly compete with super-magnets or leviathan buildings, the fact that it is functional in outerspace (not to mention, a bond between former superpowers) is a big enough deal.

Cobol_Mongol

All of them are winners in their own unique and special way.

mildretard

ALL OF THEM

AndersonBMX

Well, the with a height of about 2600feet/800+m, almost twice as tall as the sears tower, however the office space in the Burj Bubai is much only a bit more. from what i remember the Burj Bubai has 510,000 m² office space. while the sears is about 350m/1500ft shorter then Burj Bubai,sears tower has about 100,000m² less, but the sears tower only has about 110 floor, the burj Bubai has about 160 floor (sears has 50 less) the floor space is very close. And also if you take every scaperscaper (Built, Constion, Propsed), in NYC,Chicago,Hong Kong, Shanghai, and compare it with Dubai, Dubai has more high-rise and skysacper then all those 4 city added up..well around the same..I think dubai only has 3 million people, but with all its skysacper (my defind of skysacper is anything thats 300m/1000feet tall) they really don't need that much high-rise at all...excet like 10 million people move in dubai, which will not likely to happen. So they are just builting skysacper so they would be famous, and have the #1 skyline in the world...so i think sooner or later they will stop builting skysacper because no one is going to be in them...

itszjay

LHC and ISS two things that have the potential of propelling human development into a further plane of scientific evolution. Interstellar space travel ftw!!

alukard

Pyramids... They have lasted way longer than any of the other things even stand a chance of lasting.

Joseph

Percy Bysshe Shelley has a comment, and a Watchmen tie-in:

OZYMANDIAS
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

onewiththewurlitzer

I'll vote for a space elevator if and when it's built. Now THAT would be a marvel of engineering.

theoldwolf

@Jitty: So what does the amount of space have to do with the fact that we humans have built something that lasted 5,000 + years some me something older thats in the same or better condition. All the stuff we build now wont be around in 5,000 years

How about adding the nuke to the list, we can destroy the world for real now.

People of future times wont give a damn about something that isnt there anymore you can see that by how much people care about history; people dont care about what used to be somewhere if its not currently standing.

Anything from the past looked at through current tech is easy to build, we have to look at how people could build such massive things with the tech they had back then not the tech we have now.

utube2007

Well if the LHC had actually destroyed the world like so many promised, I'd have to vote for it. However if the ISS falls from space right on top of the didbuy tower of babel, the ISS would have my vote. If however the tower did fall onto the pyramids (it might reach) then the towers got my vote. Oh wait, the pyramids killed a lot of people, that's pretty impressive. We could however look at this another way, what cost more. Like in all polls, the internet gets my vote. Though, the election voting machines could get my vote too, that's was an impressive waste of money.

jkr's bold comment

the Burj Duabi Top floor is around 600ishm/2000ish feet and so without the spire the chicago spires is only a bit shorter. But i think Bubai is playing the height game with every other city. for example the a proposel skyscaper call "Pentominium" all residential skyscaper at first it was 1600 feet/500ish meter, but after the chicago spire was announce they just added a spire which makes it only a few feet.meter taller then the chiago spire..so i think they are just playing the height game. And for me a spire is ok...but they should not use it to play the height game..

itszjay

ISS because of what it takes to send a huge research station outside the earth.

Mammoth

ISS, simply for the fact that it's assembled in frickin' space! Now they just need to put a giant laser on it and it'll be perfect.

Giolon

The LHC, if only for the reason that it was built to reveal secrets into nothing short of the existence of the universe. Everything else is just in vain.

Dearhaw

For you Pyramid people the question isn't asking what is the greatest for the time it is asking what is the greatest now. All ancient civilizations made buildings by stacking rocks on top of each other it doesn't make them impressive compared to the LHC, ISS or even the Burj Dubai no matter how many people it takes.

Zomb

Sears Tower in Chicago, the birthplace of the modern skyscraper. It held the tallest building record from '73 to '98 (and technically longer cause that whole stupid spires count and antennas don't, don't even get me started with that bullshit, Sears Tower was still taller to highest occupied floor and the roof). And the height was actually restricted not be technology or cost but by an old FAA limit to protect air traffic. And its still the tallest building in North America.

ab3

Simple: The ISS is the single most expensive object ever created by man at $157 billion. The LHC is a measly $6 billion. Burj Dubai an embarrassing $4.1 billion. And all the Pyramids cost were the lives of hundreds and hundreds of slaves... and maybe a few goats were thrown in to seal the deal.

[en.wikipedia.org]

LastVigilante

The pyramids, because even if we wanted to, we would not be able to recreate them with today's technology and economy.

Matthew Hughes

I vote Pyramids but that tower is one mean sucker. If I was on the top of that tower looking down, I think I'd piss my pants.

Silenthillnight

Burj Dubai=Pyramids as in Middle East Ego Trip.
Unlike the ISS and the LHC, they serve mankind no purpose whatsoever.
So, the real competition is only between the ISS and the LHC, and the ISS is obviously the more impressive achievement because it moves at 7.7km /second 390 km over our heads, whereas the LHC only moves hadrons (albeit much faster)

helldiver

Fuck Dubai man.

CharitableNinja

Is there anyone else here that finds it odd that mankind can create an atomic particle collider but cannot create a cheap, efficient, mass producible engine that does not use burn fossil fuels ????

jdizzle1337

deff burj

enchantedgoose

pyramids - relatively straightforward with enough manpower (well documented on Discovery Channel etc)

Burj Tower - meh.....

ISS - close, but no cigar

LHC - has to be this one as the previous 3 use(d) existing technology, they haven't really made a jump in mankinds' abilities. With the LHC we're taking a leap into the unknown in a big way. Delving into the Quantum world like never before. Look at how understanding aspects of the Quantum world affected the world last time (Atomic bombs, Nuclear power).

Understanding the teeny tiny bits of the universe puts the big picture into perspective.

media_lush

is this poll serious? LHC could end the universe. its not even close.

hiimcliff

Shit. Those pyramids were awesome several millennia ago and will be even more awesome in another few millennia. Sad though that they're essentially the original XBL achievement for Pharaohs to totally lord over their descendants.

The original pissing contest.

Human Bomb Committed Solaricide

Sorry, putting a couple of tons of crap up in space is more impressive than building anything on earth.
LHC is indeed impressive but, hey I need to see it working first... then they can start mass producing dark matter and sell them in convenient little glass spheres with a key chain.

ashamaniq

LHC = Win

Go CERN !

Hellicus

Well duh, this question has only one obvious answer and that is the Pyramids. I'd like to see any of the others last as long as the pyramids have. And up to this day there are still things about them we don't know or understand. All the other contestants will be outdone in the future by other contraptions and structures but the Pyramids can never be outdone.

RE-L

@jdizzle1337: Haven't you heard that such an engine was already invented? It's the evil oil companies that have bought the technology and suppressed it all these years.

I saw it in an Internet article, so it must be true.

dc-united

"When 5000 thousand years old you reach, you not look as good"

Pyramids

newgalactic

errr, i am drunk, sorry.

biofreak

The Large Hadron Collider FTW!!!
I scientists discover new stuff and understand how to manipulate gravity, then think which is the most impressive and most the influential in a long run.
Also don't forget LHD can possible open a black hole then it'll actually start colliding stuff . hehe

biofreak

How about sending men to the moon with computing tech of an average desktop. I've never heard, "we can build the pyramids, but we can't build a toaster that doesn't burn bread."

.: R32-PΩWER ™

Really, nobody has mentioned the Internet as perhaps the most amazing feat ever accomplished by humans.

The Internet.

mkrygeri

1000 years from now, all those things will be gone except the pyramids. Marinate on that.

mullingitover

Oh come on !! the pyramids ar so BC

mpar

@ford4life: The LHC will in all likelihood only prove existing theories. In science, theories far outreach research, and few things surprise use once discovered. Naturally there are some things unimagined, but the imagined are more than 100:1
@jdizzle1337: The electric motor, now go make a battery for it.
@mkrygeri: I mentioned the internet, if on windows, ctrl+f and type "internet"

jkr's bold comment

My vote is for ISS. Second place would be LHC unless it comes up with something astounding. Nothing else on this list is in space, which in my book adds a lot of bonus points.

secretoftheeast

The pyramids should be disqualified. People didn't build them, aliens did.

The winner is the Thermos. It keeps my hot stuff hot, and my cold stuff cold. Let's see your space buildings and destructo-tubes do that.

Check, and Mate.

badhatharry

The pyramids, hands down. They took many many years to construct on ancient technology and are still around thousands of years later. Meanwhile, i'm sure nothing else will last even 100 years.

...and once the LHC destroys earth, a LOT less than 100 years! :) jk, i <3 LHC. If i was smart enough to work there, i would.

wolfenstein-3d

every time i see pictures of that dubai tower i think they are just CGI or photoshopped, i would be scared shitless to go up to the top of that thing.

i think pyramids are #1, space station #2 ... if the LHC actually works and we discover things that change how we think of physics, well that would probably move it to #1.

ford4life

The Pyramids win.

ttech10

@The Terminator: I agree... the pyramids are the only thing on that list that will still exist 500 or 5000 years from now.

FuturePastNow

The Tower is the only one built without slave labor or stolen capital. On moral grounds alone it is the best.

Boulderlaw

@The Great Rodney McKay: The building is the La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona- a construction project that was started in 1883 and still isn't finished. It remains one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture ever constructed and is without doubt Gaudi's most famous work and the finest example of his visionary genius.

Pictures or film alone cannot do this building justice- If you ever get the chance to visit Barcelona to see it you will never forget it

jimbowyer

LHC will last longer if there wont be a black hole or major earthquakes.

biofreak

Talk to me 4,500 years from now and let me know if the Dubai Tower, LHC, or ISS are still around, or still awe inspiring to people of that age. FAIL!

The Terminator

@CharitableNinja:
Fuck u man, ur probably jealous because you've never left your city.
Go 2 dubai n c the place be4 u say fuck dubai...fucking arrogant bastard
i'd vote 4 da LHC but since it hasnt done anythin yet...pyramids- naa..because it took hundreds of years and lives to make
not da ISS bec hubble is better
so tht leaves burj...n since i'v seen it n it luks fukin amazin..burj gets my vote

Mirza

A poll system that works with one click instead of seven would be an even more impressive achievement.

hanswurst0815

@Boulderlaw: Argument on definition of "slave labor" to commence in 3, 2, 1....

yelraf

@Con Seannery: And it's the only one I can see from my house, so that counts for something.

yelraf

@akiranimus: And I saw the pyramids last week on Engadget.

yelraf

Don't get me wrong, I love the hard-on collider and the Burj, and the pyramids were great, but the ISS is my pick. Not only is it a great tech feat, it's also an example of peaceful and productive international collaboration.

Con Seannery

i would like to see the burj dubai in 5,ooo years. then maybe i would have voted for it.

pyramids at giza FTW!

damnElantra

@CharitableNinja:
That's not the most tactful argument/statement you could have made.

@Mirza:
Yeah, the glam image of Dubai (which was conjured over night) is undoubtedly great--but, at the expense of exploited foreign labor? Methinks not.

Anyway, I vote the ISS. How can you not vote the ISS? It's orbiting in space!

AmbroseP

for me it came down to two things, the incredible amount of ultra-precise micro- and macro-scale engineering that went into the LHC, while the pyramids were built more with brute force, which while impressive and durable just doesnt match up to controlling of the basic building blocks of matter.

ras_d

@ARP: Using alien technology is cheating.

ISS FTW. 240ft wide 600,000lbs of the most advanced technology floating in space orbiting our planet at 17,000mph! (granted, in vacuum) BUT IN SPACE!

Parkington

ISS - for the technology
Burj - for the view
LHC - for it's scaling
Pyramids - for it's awesome precision

unspellable

@utube2007:

I think your arguments that it lasted so long therefore it's important is flawed. So what if it lasted so long? The only reason we care about it is because it last so long. It wasn't a HUGE engineering feet. It took the labor of thousands a lifetime to build it. We can build structures now that are much bigger in 1/10 of the time.

Stone henge was built thousands of years before the pyramids and it actually might have some astronomical use to it. Why aren't you praising it?

But the main point is, neither of those 2 structures have any use or significance to use today. It has had barely any lasting effect accept as a ancient marvel. If the LHC is successful, it could shape our scientific history in ways similiar to E=mc^2. Plus it's the largest scientific machine in history and moves particals at near light speeds.

Jitty

Clearly the pyramids. All those others will be destroyed/crumble over a relatively short period of time.

Ike_Skelton

pyramids, for sheer staying power.. i don't think the ISS, LHC or Burj would be here after a thousand of years.. and the logistics to build that thing at that time was really insane!

djangopool9

better than a*

Alex2643

ISS betters humanity? Yea let me know how that is when its crashed into earth in the next 100 yrs or less. LHC? destroys the world that when Ill consider it better a normal particle accelerator. Pyramids? Yes that got my vote I mean you know your good when current day scientists think aliens had to have built it, cuz it was beyond your skills. The tower? I like that one idea of putting the LHC on top n having a wicked sauron eye replica. PYRAMIDS FTW

Alex2643

It all depends.
Usefulness? Burj Dubai
Potential Usefulness? ISS
Size? LHC
Over-compensating-for-something-ness? Pyramids, hands down.

smartboydan hates college

ISS FTW.
You build your bedroom on earth, pack it in a ship, fly it 350 miles straight up, then assemble it next to your living room. Your dimensions on earth must be so exact, that if youre off by the width of a human hair, you could quite possibly die.
youre assembling your home moving at 18,000 mph, no gravity, and a bolt flys out of your finger tips. That one bolt, besides being disastrous for your entire home, will cost a few hundred million dollars to replace. You strip a bolt, and its going to take 5 months and possibly $500,000,000 to fix.
ISS pwns everything else

drewdoog

I'd say a toss up between the ISS and the pyramids. The Burj Dubai is just another skyscraper- a little taller than the last, but not much else. The LHC is another particle accelerator, using much of the same infrastructure as the one it followed. Mostly it's a flash in the pan, popular right now because it's been in the news, and even that mostly for an invented controversy. If you really voted for it because it "could destroy the world" or some such, you deserve all the ridicule you can find. Yes, it will advance "science", just as much as any other piece of equipment. Newton made far more revolutionary discoveries using an apple and his head.

On the other hand, the pyramids are the first example of a nation working together to achieve one of the first great projects of the civilized world. They aren't the largest projects in terms of mass collectively, the Great Wall is far larger. On the other hand, they weren't constructed solely for one man's ego either; they played a critical role in the seasonal agricultural economy of ancient Egypt. Yes, they have lasted for thousands of years, but so have much smaller efforts of mankind.

The ISS takes an entirely different approach to greatness. The technologies involved leaps involved are are/were far greater than anything of the others listed. The Burj, as noted, needed only funding and an ego. The pyramids were much more an economic and political feat, although getting the architecture right did, in fact, take a few tries to adapt it to the scale used. The LHC is an up-scaled version particle accelerators and colliders that have been running for decades. The greatest hurdles it faces are probably how to handle all that data. Now, while space stations have existed before, there have only been two- Mir and Spacelab. Neither of those could approach the ISS in scale, and it is truly the first real example of construction in space. Merely by that factor alone, the ISS ranks right up there with the first time two stones were stacked on top of each other (which almost certainly no longer exists). Furthermore, the ISS, one can hope, represents the only new beginning on this list. After the three great pyramids at Giza, no larger pyramids were built, and the overwhelming importance of religion and death ceremonies in human life has slowly faded over the millenia. Similarly, while large particle smashers may, and almost certainly will, someday be built, the LHC seems to represent on the last great examples of it class. The Burj we won't even talk about. In contrast to all of these, the ISS with luck will be the first example of the expansion of our species beyond the bounds of the Earth's atmosphere. If that isn't a measure of greatness, then I don't know what is.

icelight

@Twoje:

nah, it's still a few thousand years younger than the pyramids.. add to that the harsher desert conditions.

djangopool9

Red Apple, Green Apple, Blue Apple, Orange.

One of these things is not comparable to the others. Hint: It's the pyramids.

Moonshadow101

I'd say the most impressive thing right now is the Universe. It's both beautiful and complex from the smallest particles to the biggest galaxies. There's nothing mankind has made that has surpassed it yet.

Mac007

@Mac007: Wow, what a cop out.

I vote ISS, just because it is In Space! but they are all pretty serious accomplishments.

Log1c

@Mirza: Dude, I'm begging you: Stop posting as if you were typing on a sidekick. This is a blog. You're not texting your gf 2 mt u @ food court. Use real words. Please.

badhatharry

@ARP: slavery?

Who let the Trolls out?

@badhatharry: LOL! Agreed. That was painful.

bucho54

I'm surprised the Pyramids have a lower score than the LHC. Need I remind you people that they were constructed of multi-ton stone by HAND?

rifdawg

I don't think the pyramids should count because they were made with the assistance of extraterrestrial technology.

Jesse in Japan

Oh come on!! How can anyone choose something other than the pyramids? Seriously, in this day in age, almost anything can be built when you have the right people and money, no truely amazing obstacles. Where as the pyramids were man made, something we still dont realize how it was done. This was made when there was no real 'technology', making it a feat that will and has lived on in history, forever. Can that be said about any of the other things listed? Not at all. I still think they are truly amazing, the Burj especially, but no where near the impressiveness of the pyramids.

And what a coincidence, really, I am in Egypt at the moment and saw the pyramids a few months ago. Truly amazing, seeing it in pictures or even in 3D or whatever, is nothing like seeing its scale and amazingness up in front of you with its size.

Truly insane and beautiful.

Sentry

@The Terminator: hear, hear!

okeribok

@Mirza: You're not doing yourself or your argument any favours with that horrible excuse for English. I guess it's supposed to be "txt spk" but this isn't a text message, it's a blog on the internet.

And txt or no txt: unless you come from da hood or da ghetto, "the" shall NEVER be spelled as "da"!

indorock

The Burj Dubai to me represents some ugly mix of uber-capitalism and a submission to "who's got the biggest dick" contest (other rivals include Shanghai, Abu Dhabi, etc). It represents excess, something that Western countries are slowly realizing as a bad thing.

LHC actually contributes knowledge to this planet, *about* this planet, so it gets my vote. The pyramids a close 2nd, they are the epitome of "they don't make 'em like they used to."

indorock

Got to be The Pyramids. They will be here LONG after all that other crap is LONG gone!

I mean they were old when Cleopatra was walking the earth, when Jesus was walking the earth when Alexander the Great was walking the earth they were already old.

Crazy!

When Dubai is under 30 foot of water from global warming they will still be there!

tymiles

@ypctx: correction, planed -> planeT (the earth)

ypctx

are you people mad?
LHC -> better understanding of matter -> better techology -> no diseases, no famine, longevity, saved planed, serious space exploration, etc. etc.
The piramids, a building, an orbital trash DON'T EVEN GET CLOSE.

ypctx

The ISS is a money hole that keeps NASA tethered to lower Earth orbit and away from actual steps forward in the space program. Boo-urns.

StartingAces

Build the Burj in space, powered by the LHC, and manufacturing pyramids, then I'll be impressed.

(yes, I know the LHC is not a power source, but go with the pretend image I'm creating here)

ottermann

Man this question is making my head hurt.....um.. uh ... mmmmmmmmmmm ISS gets my vote but the LHC has that awsome eye thing. (pictured above) Do you think it will kill me because I didn't vote for it?

chumleyex

A really fancy gun, a really tall house, a really big house, or a house IN SPACE.

Clearly, ISS.

khamer

Building something back then that is as massive as the pyramids with the precision of the construction with the level of technology at the time.

DaBigCasino

The pyramids were built by slaves. The whip driven till death kind of ones. They were only an accomplishment of man's depravity to man for a single man.

The Dubai tower is the only one that received all of its money via voluntary consent of people investing in oil. When you voluntarily want to go somewhere you trade your work for the work of refining that gas.

The ISS and the LHC were built by people who could not find their money by voluntary consent. They used the tax/force of the government to build these things. Maybe something will come out of them and maybe not. NASA got to the moon because of commercial companies and it is these companies who are the space age not NASA.

plemke1

@ARP: Technology? Or using tens of thousands of slaves and getting them to haul massive stones until they dropped dead, and all in the aid of cult worship? Hardly the greatest testament to human achievement.

ISS wins hands down. Jury is still out on the LHC.

DelSource

The Pyramids are one of the 7 most incredible man made things, yeah it took slavery to build them and even Jacob from Egypt who's engravings still exhist on the Pyramids tell about far greater things then all of these that are created by men! But, hey; we should be able to jump and see for ourselves if time and space can be controlled and kept open like a door way aka Star Gate for quantum applications at the AO level that's faster than the speed of light! But, it sure takes a huge market to keep business turning to create any thing from the material plain, but how long will it last for unlest it's tied with string theory then with the LHC it can takes us kinetically like no other or charge the physical and actually do real travel, as if a plane wasn't fast enough already! LOL.

StealthNinja

The most obvious omission from the list?

Flux Capacitor

theycallmetak

@gloveofpower: Wow. Gloveofpower nailed it with that post. Exactly!

rockhopper

The pyramids were said to be built in 10 years, with no iron tools or pullies, at a rate of 180 blocks per hour (1.5-4tons each) laid so precise you can't fit a razorblade between them.

I vote for pyramids

ooosername

It's the ISS because it's the only thing on the list built WITHOUT slave labor.

b0tterman