7 INTERNET MEMES WHO SUED

7 internet memes who sued
By Dan Stewart, The Week, 26 September 2013.

What happens when the surprise stars of the internet fight back?

Memes bubble up from the swamps of the internet every day, to be shared on Reddit message boards and Facebook walls alike. But how do people react to becoming the unwitting stars of shareable content? Some embrace their internet stardom, by trading off their minor celebrity. Others write thoughtful pieces exploring the pitfalls of online notoriety. But litigious memes head to court to protect, defend, or fight their sudden rise to fame. Here are seven memes who did just that:

1. and 2. Keyboard Cat and Nyan Cat

These celebrity cats paired up to strike a blow for intellectual property rights this week by winning a lawsuit against corporate giant Warner Bros. Charlie Schmidt, creator of the Keyboard Cat video, and Christopher Torres, who designed the Nyan Cat meme, sued Warner and 5th Cell Media in April for using their creations in the game "Scribblenaughts" without permission - and claimed victory this week. Schmidt and Torres will now receive compensation for their work, and the famous felines will continue to appear in the game. They aren't the only litigious kitties on the web, however. Grumpy Cat recently lawyered up, and has vowed to swipe its claws at any would-be copyright infringer. "Never underestimate the power of cats on the internet," said Katie Van Syckle in New York.

3. Star Wars Kid

Ghyslian Raza became a meme back when BuzzFeed, YouTube, and Reddit were just twinkles in Father Internet's eye. A video showing the Canadian school kid battling invisible enemies wielding a makeshift "light sabre" went viral in 2003 after his classmates posted it to the Kazaa file-sharing network (remember that?). His parents sued the families of those classmates for US$250,000 for Raza's mental distress. Although Raza's folks feared he would be scarred for life, the former Jedi fantasist is doing just fine, now - acting as president of a conservation study, and a law graduate himself.

4. Epic Boobs Girl

Alix Bromley, via Coed.

Alix Bromley posted a picture of her sizeable decolletage on Bebo (remember that?) in 2006, but was alarmed to watch it become a meme on comment boards and chat rooms as a motivational poster with the words "Epic Boobs" beneath. Bromley attempted to sue British men's magazine Loaded in 2010 for a breach of privacy, for featuring the picture alongside an offer of US$750 for anyone who could talk her into posing for the magazine. The country's Press Complaints Commission rejected her complaint, as the image had been widely disseminated online. Bromley reportedly went on to become a model, under the somewhat less ignominious nickname of Alix Boop.

5. Angry Hitler

Footage from the 2004 war drama Downfall showing a fictional Adolf Hitler ranting at his generals was repurposed by seemingly every YouTube user on earth in the late 2000s, with new subtitles making it seem like the Fuhrer was furious at everything from Obama's election to Kanye West's interruption at the 2009 VMA Awards. Sadly, creator Constantin Films was not as amused as the rest of us, and filed a copyright claim in 2010 to remove the jokes from the internet. Despite the sturm und drang, the videos kept on multiplying - and Constantin soon gave in, reportedly placing advertisements on some of them. Today, there's even a "My Fuhrer" Android app that allows you to make your own version.

6. "Technoviking"

The battle over "Technoviking" reaches back over a decade. Filmmaker Matthias Fritsch first uploaded a video of a topless, muscular raver he filmed at an outdoor party to his own website in 2001, and promptly forgot all about it. But the internet didn't, and the "Technoviking" became a YouTube phenomenon in 2007. Fritsch made around 10,000 euros leasing the clip to a few TV shows, and selling "Technoviking" T-shirts. Another two years passed before the bearded raver got in touch, suing the filmmaker for 250,000 euros. After years of legal wrangling, a court ordered Fritsch in June to re-edit the original video so the anonymous dancer can't be identified, and to pay him 8,000 euros. "What is the sense of it?" said the filmmaker, who plans to make a documentary about the courtroom battle. "The meme won't be banned from the web. In fact, it's just better known because of the big fuss that the plaintiff made."

7. Adam Holland

Adam Holland, via Nashville City Paper.

The parents of Adam Holland, who suffers from Down syndrome, are taking a legal stand against a trio of mean-spirited meme creators. Pamela and Bernard Holland are suing a Tampa radio station, Minnesota resident Russell LaLevee, and signgenerator.org for featuring a 2004 photo of Adam, then 17, holding up a picture he had drawn. The Tampa radio station replaced the picture with the words "Retarded News," while LaLevee posted a doctored version on Twitter. The website allows users to write their own text on the picture using a "Retarded Handicap Generator." If the defamation lawsuit is successful, that could spell bad news for meme generators - but good news for other reluctant internet stars. However, lawyer Woodrow Hartzog told The Daily Dot it would be a tough case to prove. "People who have been wronged or defamed [online] don't really have a good answer right now in the law," he said.

Top image: Keyboard Cat. Credit: Facebook/Keyboard Cat.

[Source: The Week. Edited. Some images added.]

VENTURI VBB-3: THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL ELECTRIC CAR

Venturi unveils world’s most powerful electric car, the VBB-3
By Lakshmi Sandhana, Gizmag, 28 September 2013.

French manufacturer Venturi Automobiles is no stranger to the world of high-speed electric vehicles. The company's on-going collaboration with Ohio State University saw the Buckeye Bullet 2.5 set the current EV land speed record of 495 km/h (307mph) in 2010, and now the team is setting its sights on a new mark with what's billed as the most powerful electric car ever made - the Venturi VBB-3.

Side and top views of the VBB-3

The VBB-3 was unveiled this month by Prince Albert II of Monaco and Princess Charlene at the Wendover airfield in Utah, USA.

The third generation Venturi “Jamais Contente” (which translates as "The Never Satisfied") cost a cool US$6 million to build. The aim of the project is to hit progressively higher targets over the next two years, with the ultimate goal being to exceed 440 mph (708 km/h).

A 3D view of the VBB-3 engine

If it manages to do that, this needle-like EV will smash the official FIA world land speed record for a vehicle with an electric motor of 495 km/hr (307m/hr) set by its predecessor the Buckeye Bullet 2.5. Unfortunately no record run could be attempted this month due to dismal weather that flooded the Salt Lake. The team hoped to cross the 600 km/hr (372 mph) threshold this year, but that's been rescheduled to July 2014.

A close up of the VBB-3 batteries

Housed in a 11.64 m-long carbon fibre skin, the 4WD VBB-3 features an electric motor that can deliver power of up to 3,000 hp (2,200 kW) and weighs about 3.2 tonnes in total, with batteries accounting for about half its weight.

The VBB-3 deconstructed

Inspired by the exploits of Belgian driver Camille Jenatzy's who broke the 100 km/h barrier in an electric vehicle 1899, the project is part of Venturi's Global Challenges initiative - a set of technological tests like Mission 04, which saw Xavier Chevrin travel 5,800 km (3,603 mi) through Africa in an EV.

The front of the VBB-3

As well as grabbing headlines, the VBB-3 serves as a test bed for specially developed components that will have applications for production vehicles.

The VBB-3 team gathers around the car

"By designing the most powerful electric vehicle in the world, we are consolidating our lead in the field of electric propulsion, but perhaps more importantly, we are innovating in order to optimize energy efficiency, one of the greatest challenges facing not only the automobile industry, but society in general," says Gildo Pallanca Pastor, CEO of Venturi Automobiles.

Check out the Venturi VBB-3 in the video below.

Article Source: Venturi Automobiles

More videos here and images here.

All photos: Venturi Automobiles

[Post Source: Gizmag. Edited. Some images and links added.]

10 AWESOME GROUPS OF GERMANS WHO RESISTED THE NAZIS

10 Awesome Groups Of Germans Who Resisted The Nazis
By Michael Van Duisen, Listverse, 29 September 2013.

The common belief is that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis ruled Germany with an iron fist, crushing any rebellion or dissent with swift fury. However, there were a number of groups active in Germany that were trying to take down the Nazis. These groups were collectively known simply as “Widerstand” (“Resistance”).

10. The Edelweiss Pirates

Another group of ex-Hitler Youth, the Edelweiss Pirates began organizing right before the outbreak of World War II. Mostly comprised of teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18, they had no central leader and were only loosely affiliated with the groups in other cities - sometimes, the only common factor was the Edelweiss flower badge which they all wore. As the war dragged on, the Edelweiss Pirates performed increasingly dangerous tasks, including sabotage against German railways and aiding Jews fleeing from the Nazis. German reprisals were varied, depending on the severity of the crime, but many were sent to camps or prisons, with some even being executed. When the war ended, many of them disbanded, but a few continued, turning their attentions to the Allied troops who now occupied Germany.

9. The Swing Kids

Mainly based in the city of Hamburg, the Swing Kids began as a counterculture group to Nazism. They were youth who enjoyed American swing music, something the Nazis detested. Though not very political at the beginning, the Swing Kids were said to have begun spreading the truth heard from the Allies to German citizens. (However, most of their protests seemed to be in the form of petty crime or vandalism.) In addition, many of the group members began to non-violently protest other aspects of Nazi rule, with some even going on to join other more political groups like the White Rose. After 1941, the Nazis began to crack down on the swing clubs, sending many of the children to concentration camps.

8. Johann George Elser

Normally a footnote in the history of Hitler and Nazism, Johann George Elser was one of many men who tried to assassinate Hitler. However, Elser is part of a select group of people who tried to do it alone. Every year, the Nazis would meet at the Beer Hall Putsch, to commemorate the failed overthrow of the German government that landed a younger Hitler in jail. Elser knew this and used it to his advantage. Ten months before Hitler was going to give his annual speech on November 8, 1939, Elser began scouting out the area. For months, Elser worked, hollowing out a stone pillar behind where Hitler would stand, so a bomb could be placed inside of it. He created a timer that would last for 144 hours and set it for 9:20 PM on November 8, right in the middle of Hitler’s speech. Unfortunately, Hitler changed his plans at the last minute because of weather problems and ended 30 minutes early, escaping unharmed. Elser was arrested and imprisoned until April 1945, when he was executed.

7. The European Union

Not to be confused with the collection of European countries today, the original European Union was a group of anti-fascist Germans who despised Nazism and what it had done to their country. Founded in Berlin in 1939, the group began under the leadership of Robert Havemann, a chemist, and Georg Groscurth, a doctor. The European Union produced many leaflets during the war, as well as providing aid and information to Allied Forces and those hunted by the Nazis. However, they never actively tried to take down the government because they felt it would collapse on its own. What they wanted to do was create a unified, socialist Europe. Paul Hatschek, one of the leading members, was captured by the Gestapo in 1943 and ratted out nearly every person in the group, with at least 15 of them being killed.

6. The White Rose

Only operating for a short time between June 1942 and February 1943, the White Rose was a non-violent group, mostly made up of intellectuals, who distributed pamphlets and used graffiti to try and sway public opinion against the Nazis. The group was led by a group of 20-year-olds who had become disillusioned with what Hitler had turned Germany into. (Many of the leaders were ex-Hitler Youth.) The White Rose became quite popular, especially among college students, and various offshoots popped up in different towns. Three of the founders, Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst, were eventually betrayed to the Nazis by a janitor at their university and executed on February 22, 1943. Afterward, the White Rose movement fell apart, though almost no one else was caught.

5. The Solf Circle

The least successful of all the groups on this list, the Solf Circle was an informal group of intellectuals who were against Nazism. Established by Johanna Solf, the widow of a German ambassador, the group would routinely meet to discuss their plans to aid the Jews (Solf and her daughter helped hide a number of Jews and assisted their escape from the country). On September 10, 1943 at a birthday party for Elisabeth von Thadden (a famous Protestant headmistress at a nearby school), a secret Gestapo agent was unknowingly invited by one of the members and he reported their actions. Nearly everyone was rounded up, arrested, tried, and executed.

4. The Catholic Church

For starters, we’re not talking about Pope Pius XII, whose track record is spotty and controversial. Rather, we’re talking about certain Catholic priests in Germany, who vociferously fought against, among other things, the T4 program (the so-called “euthanasia program”). Aided by the fact that nearly half of all Germans were Catholic, the Church was able to effectively convince Hitler to abandon the project because he feared having to fight them while he was fighting a war on two fronts.

3. The Rosenstrasse Protest

A singular event, perpetrated because of the deportation of thousands of Jewish men who were married to non-Jewish women, the Rosenstrasse protest was one of the largest public displays against Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. For over a week in early 1943, the women peacefully marched in protest against their husbands’ deportation. Seemingly faced with death each night at the hands of the guards they marched in front of, they persisted, until Hitler released the prisoners, even those already sent to Auschwitz. (This was more out of concern for the secrecy of his “Final Solution” than anything else though.) Because no one was punished, and almost all of the men survived the war, this incident provides one of the greatest “What if?” questions about the whole war: What if the rest of Germany had stood up to Hitler?

2. Kreisau Circle

Established and led by Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, and Adam von Trott zu Solz, the Kreisau Circle was stationed at Moltke’s estate. Said to be one of the main centres of the German resistance movement, their goal was to figure out how to establish a peaceful, Christian Germany, after the war was lost. (For them, it was difficult to reconcile their hatred toward Hitler and the Nazis and their patriotic love for Germany.) The group was known for spreading information to the Allies, as well as other resistance groups within Germany. Later in the war, some of the members were involved in a failed assassination of Adolf Hitler (the one portrayed in the movie Valkyrie) and many of the Kreisau Circle were arrested and executed, even those who had no part in the coup attempt.

1. Red Orchestra

This name applies to both Soviet and German espionage programs and the specific German one we’re discussing is the Schulze-Boysen/Harnack group, which was created in 1936. Named after Harro Schulze-Boysen (the Luftwaffe staff officer who founded it) and his friends, one of their goals was to gather intelligence for the Allies and help those hunted by the Nazis to get to freedom. However, their primary goal was to incite civil disobedience by distributing a number of leaflets, as well as causing the Nazis grief through the spectre of subversion groups. In 1942, after Gestapo agents intercepted some of their radio transmissions, nearly all of the members of the group were arrested and executed.

[Source: Listverse. Edited.]

12 GADGETS AHEAD OF THEIR TIME

12 Gadgets Ahead of Their Time
By Mark Spoonauer, Laptop, 20 September 2013.

A piece of technology doesn’t have to be a hit for it to be a milestone. In fact, some of the most important gadgets flopped, as it takes years of refinement for any given product category to resonate with mainstream consumers. For pioneering companies, it’s about pointing the way for an industry through innovation and risk taking. Remember the first stab at a smartphone, or the first mass-market digital camera? Did you know the first video call was placed while Lyndon Johnson was in office? Although these 12 gadgets enjoyed various degrees of commercial success, they all should be remembered for being ahead of their time.

1. Mattel Power Glove (1989)

Nintendo took gaming in an exciting new direction in 2006 with the Wii and its motion-sensing remote, but the technology didn't exactly come from nowhere. The company likely took inspiration from the failed Mattel Power Glove, which debuted in 1989.

This geek-chic accessory was a controller for the Nintendo Entertainment System that used hand gestures for gameplay. Unfortunately, the Power Glove wasn't half as precise as the Wii remote, but it represented an important first step on the path to motion-based gaming. Now, it's the Xbox One's turn to take this category to the next level.

More: 10 Killer Xbox One Launch Games

2. Qualcomm pdQ (1999)

Right as the PDA market was nearing its peak, Qualcomm took the digital versions of peanut butter and chocolate and crammed them together. What was missing from the Palm Pilot was communication, and the pdQ delivered it in a huge 9.8-ounce package.

For the first time ever, users could place a call from the Palm Address Book (a big deal back then), and APIs gave third-party developers access to the pdQ's features. The US$799 price was quite high, as was the 1.3-inch profile, but this ambitious hybrid blazed a trail for an entire industry.

More: Best Smartphones 2013

3. The Minitel (1982)

Yes, the French are known for great wines, but they should get more credit for being tech pioneers. Deployed in 1982, the Minitel 1 allowed users to make purchases, read newspapers, exchange digital messages and more using an online network that predated the real Internet. By the mid-1990s, nearly half of the French population (25 million) was using the 9 million Minitel devices in circulation. Although telecommunications provider PTT - and later, France Telecom - were unable to export the service, in a way, the Minitel 1 was the world's first Internet appliance.

More: Best Tablets 2013

4. Apple Newton (1993)

A lot of tech pundits call the Apple Newton a flop. Even "The Simpsons" poked fun at this pen-enabled gadget's inaccurate Calligrapher handwriting recognition. But this 0.9-lb. personal digital assistant paved the way for PDAs like the Palm Pilot. The original US$700 Apple MessagePad 100 featured a 20-MHz ARM 610 RISC processor, 40 MB of ROM and a 336 x 240-pixel pressure-sensitive display for use with the included stylus. Bundled apps included Notes, Names, Dates, as well as a calculator and currency converter.

By 1998, the Newton simply didn't have enough legs to stay competitive in the market, but the effort wasn't for naught. The company that created the OS for the original iPod was founded by two ex-Apple Newton developers.

More: iPhone 5S: Why We Love (and Hate) Apple Products

5. AT&T Picturephone (1964)

Making its debut at the New York World's Fair in 1964, the AT&T Picturephone enabled the first transcontinental video call between that venue and Disneyland. The Mod 1 was the first Picturephone on display, which packed a Plumbicon camera and a small CRT display within its oval housing. Similar to today's laptop webcams, the Picturephone's camera was located atop the screen in order to help users see eye to eye. Six years later, AT&T rolled out Picturephones commercially in Pittsburgh, but the units proved to be too bulky and pricey. It wouldn't be until much later, with the advent of services like Skype (for the desktop) and FaceTime (for the iPhone and iPad) that video calling would go mainstream.

More: Best Smartphones 2013

6. HP Jornada 720 (2001)

Long before netbooks hit the mobile computing scene, the Jornada 720 gave road warriors a combination between a PDA and a mini laptop that they could take anywhere. This 1.1-lb. device ran Microsoft's Windows Handheld PC 2000 OS, based on the same Windows CE software that powered Pocket PCs (remember those?). Pocket versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint were on-board for productivity, along with a keyboard three-quarters the size of a normal one.

The Jornada 720's 6.5-inch touch screen (640 x 240 pixels) was pretty sharp for the time, and the 206-MHz ARM processor was zippy enough for everyday tasks. Alas, you needed to buy a Type II PC Card to get wireless connectivity - after all, this was before the Wi-Fi era - but overall, the 720 pointed the way toward today's instant-on Ultrabooks.

More: Top 10 Ultrabooks

7. Xybernaut Poma Wearable PC (2002)

In January 2002, a writer for ZDNet said it was "almost time for wearable computing." His supposed proof? The Xybernaut Poma Wearable PC, a US$1,500 contraption that consisted of a 10.9-ounce Windows CE device (and bundled with pocket versions of Internet Explorer, Outlook, Windows Media Player and Word), an optical mouse and a colour display mounted on a headband that let you view 800 x 600 images on the go. There were just way too many pieces to the Poma puzzle for it to take off. Now that more than a decade has passed, all you need is a smartphone paired with a heads-up display like Google Glass or a smartwatch to tap into wearable computing's potential.

More: Top 10 Features of Google Glass

8. Microsoft Zune (2006)

A good six years before Samsung Galaxy S3 owners could share files by tapping devices together, Microsoft let music lovers swap songs over Wi-Fi with the original Zune. Microsoft's answer to the iPod was, indeed, ahead of its time. Unfortunately, this innovative form of social networking made the record labels so nervous that Zune owners could play a shared track just three times before it disappeared. Although the iPod touch would later crush the Zune franchise, the player's slick interface inspired the look and feel of both Windows Phone and, later, Windows 8.

More: iPhone 6 Features: What We Want From Apple

9. HP Compaq Tablet PC TC1000 (2002)

Today, 2-in-1 detachable designs are all the rage in PCs as Intel and its partners attempt to deliver the best of both worlds. But way back in 2002, HP was one of the first to offer a convertible tablet design in the Tablet PC TC1000. For a fairly steep price, this 10.4-inch device featured an innovative swivel design, digital pen and a keyboard dock. The slate portion of the TC1000 weighed 3 lbs., and the combo weighed 4 lbs. While the Transmeta processor was sluggish, HP would later follow up with a zippier Pentium M chip. What was missing was an OS optimized for tablet use. The touch-friendly Windows 8 software is much better at juggling work and play than Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.

More: Top 8 Windows Tablet-Laptop Hybrids

10. Electronic Quarterback (1978)

I'm proud to admit I owned one of the first-ever handheld gaming devices when I was a kid. Electronic Quarterback, made by Coleco, was awesomely addictive. This very simple diversion consisted of a series of lines on the screen representing players that you moved with thick buttons. There was also a physical switch for toggling between kick and pass modes.

The original Nintendo Game Boy (which was obviously more versatile) wouldn't debut until 12 years later, and now, the mobile gaming industry (led by smartphones) is expected to rake in US$8 billion this year. Believe it or not, Electronic Quarterback is available on the Google Play store - in case you're willing to spend a buck to reminisce.

More: Top 12 Android Games

11. WebTV (1996)

In 2013, smart TVs with built-in Internet connections are common place, but in 1996, it was a very brave new world. In fact, it was so brave that start-up WebTV used a dial-up connection for its set-top box, which let consumers access the Web, email and more from the comfort of their sofas. The price of admission? US$349 for the Sony version, and US$329 for the Philips model. The wireless keyboard cost US$50 extra.

Microsoft swooped in the following year to scoop up WebTV for a hefty US$425 million, later rebranding the service as MSN TV in 2001, but consumers still weren't biting. With the Xbox One upon us, which integrates live TV with gameplay and taps into a wealth of streaming services (and even a browser), the WebTV dream lives on.

More: 10 Best TV Apps

12. Logitech Fotoman (1990)

The first truly digital camera wasn't made by Canon, Nikon or Olympus, but a company best known for its computer mice. The Logitech Fotoman (also known as the Dycam Model 1), shot in lowly 320 x 240-pixel resolution in black and white, but you could store 32 shots to the 1MB of internal memory.

For US$980, you could be the first on your block to avoid developing film. Mind you, the Fotoman didn't have a built-in LCD like today's digicams; you had to plug it into a PC via a serial port to view the photos. Today, most consumers use smartphones - rather than digital point-and-shoots - to take and share pictures on the go, but innovations like the Fotoman made this evolution possible.

More: 10 Amazing Pictures Taken with the Lumia 1020

Top image: Apple Newton MessagePad devices. Credit: Geoff Parsons/Wikimedia Commons.

[Source: Laptop. Edited. Top image and some links added.]

Related Posts:
1. 10 Gadgets Ahead of Their Time
2. Technology Before Its Time: Six Gadgets Too Good, Too Soon
3. 10 Gadgets That Deserved to Die

10 MOST POWERFUL PIECES OF TECHNOLOGY OF THEIR KIND

10 Most Powerful Pieces Of Technology Of Their Kind
By Alan Boyle, Listverse, 29 September 2013.

Technology is an awesome thing. Without it, you’d not be reading this list right now, and your life would be much worse because of that. But, while we have some pretty powerful gadgets available to us compared to just a few decades ago, science has produced machines whose power dwarfs anything you’re likely to come close to in your life. Here are the 10 most powerful items of their type in the world.

10. Camera

The awesomely named Dark Energy Camera is the most powerful camera in the world. It’s being built at Fermilab in Illinois as part of a project to figure out why the expansion of the universe is getting faster. The 570-megapixel device is 70 times more powerful than a phone camera, which is handy since it’s going to be viewing things 8 billion light-years farther away. The lenses alone cost US$1.6 million each, and there are five of them. Over the next five years, it will take pictures of 300 million galaxies from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, hopefully offering some answers to the mystery that has stumped astronomers for a decade and a half.

9. Loudspeaker

The most powerful speaker ever constructed is the HS-60, an acoustic hailing device produced by the Wattre Corporation in the US. From one meter (3.3 ft) away, it produces a noise level of 182 decibels (dB), slightly above the volume that kills hearing tissue. For comparison, the loudest recommended level of noise for someone wearing hearing protection is 140 dB. The HS-60 created 140.2 dB at a distance of 128 meters (over 400 ft). It’s loud enough that if it was producing a voice transmission, you’d be able to hear it clearly over three kilometres (two miles) away.

Unfortunately, it’s not currently available for purchase, so you’ll have to make do with its slightly less-powerful cousin, the HS-40. The HS-40 is able to transmit a voice clearly over half that distance and is used for hailing ships and making security announcements over large distances.

8. Laser

The most powerful laser in the world is housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The laser is part of the National Ignition Facility and was designed to research methods of achieving fusion power. They use 192 lasers, which converge onto one point and produce 60 times more energy than any previous laser system.

At its peak, it produces 500 trillion watts of power, which is 1,000 times more than the entire US uses at any time. It looks as sci-fi as it sounds, so much so that scenes from the latest Star Trek movie were shot there.

7. Magnet

The most powerful magnet in the world was finished in 2012 by scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. It was capable of producing 100 Teslas, long seen as the Holy Grail of magnet engineers. The director of the lab where it was built described it as “our Moon shot,” and it took 15 years of work to complete.

So how powerful is 100 Teslas? It’s 2 million times the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field and over six times more than is needed to levitate a frog. The magnet is expected to help with a large number of physics experiments, and if you were hoping to play with it, we’re afraid it’s already fully booked. It’s only able to produce the field for a short pulse, as the force it produces could be enough to tear itself apart.

There is even a way to produce magnetic fields up to 1,000 Teslas - scientists take a pulse magnet, surround it with explosives, and set both off at the same time. The magnetic field inside the implosion is condensed, and massive fields can be produced. Of course, these can only be used once.

6. Diesel Engine

The most powerful diesel engine in the world can be found on the Emma Maersk cargo ship. It’s four stories high - the engine, not the ship - and over 26 meters (about 85 ft) in length. This diesel engine produces over 100,000 brake horsepower and over 5.5 million foot-pounds of torque, around 2,500 times more than a tractor. Most impressively, it’s extremely efficient, losing only around 50 percent of its energy to heat. (That may sound like a lot, but it’s actually pretty good for a diesel engine.)

5. Supercomputers

The TOP500 project keeps records of the most powerful computers in the world. The current leader is Tianhe-2, a Chinese supercomputer run by their National University of Defense Technology. The system operates at 33.86 petaflops per second. That’s 33,000 times faster than a Playstation 4, by comparison. It runs on a custom operating system named Kylin, meaning “Chinese unicorn.”

Though America’s next-closest contender is half as fast as Tianhe-2, the US still dominates the top 500, accounting for over half of the world’s fastest supercomputers.

4. X-Ray Generators

The Z-Machine is officially the world’s most powerful X-ray generator. Located at the Sandia National Laboratories facility in New Mexico, the Z-Machine is so powerful (and just generally huge) that it’s submerged in an enormous tank of water and oil, so adjustments need to be made by divers in scuba gear.

How powerful is it? At its peak, it produces power 80 times more than the electrical generation capacity of every single power plant. On Earth. Combined. It discharges in less than 100 billionths of a second, but for that time, it’s literally the most powerful man-made thing ever. It can also propel a small piece of metal from 0 to 122,000 kph (76,000 mph) in under one second, which is faster than the Earth moves through space.

3. Robots

The strongest robot in the world is an industrial robot named Titan, produced by German manufacturer KUKA robotics. It’s able to lift a full-sized car to a height of three meters (about 10 ft), which you will notice greatly exceeds both the strength and reach of the human masters it will one day help to overthrow.

There is, of course, no need to worry about that because it’s safely bolted to the floor of the fac– oh, holy crap. They’ve given it wheels. It was nice knowing you, fellow lumps of feeble meat.

2. Solar Furnace

The largest and most powerful solar furnace on the planet is located in the Pyrenees Mountains on the border between France and Spain. It consists of a massive curved array of 10,000 mirrors, which concentrate sunlight from hundreds of flat mirrors on the opposite hillside. “Furnace” is the correct choice of word, as it is able to focus beams to create a temperature of 6,000 °C (5,430 °F), about half the surface temperature of the Sun.

The high temperatures produced by the furnace are used for everything from generating electricity to the creation of carbon nanotubes. It’s also handy for testing materials designed for coating spaceships to protect them from the heat produced during re-entry.

1. Gun

The most powerful gunshot on the planet was created by scientists from the US Navy in 2010 without the use of any explosives. They used a prototype rail gun, effectively a cannon that accelerates an aluminium shell to enormous velocities, using electromagnetic fields. The rail gun is heralded as the weapon of the future in naval warfare, with predictions that the weapons will be able to fire at a range of 320 kilometres (200 mi), compared to the 20 kilometres (12 mi) of contemporary artillery.

Current prototypes can only last for a few shots, since they produce a lot of heat during operation. The US has given US$34.5 million to BAE Systems to develop a more durable version of the weapon, capable of firing up to 10 shots a minute without blowing itself apart.

[Source: Listverse. Edited.]