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First skyscraper in Paris for 30 years given official go-ahead
New skyscrapers will once again grace the skies of Paris after officials cleared the way for the first high rise construction since high rise buildings were banned in the city by Jacques Chirac when he was mayor in 1977.
They voted to allow the construction of Project Triangle, the first of about 20 high rise projects that will transform the skyline of France's capital city. Work could start as soon as the end of next year.
The 200 meter tall, 50 story glass building to be built at Porte de Versailles, will be the third largest in Paris after the Eiffel Tower and the Montparnasse Tower when it is completed in 2012.
It marks a complete turnaround for planning in the city. When Chirac was mayor of Paris he limited new buildings to a height of 37 meters. But a shortage of housing and office space has led the current political regime to overturn the ruling.
Plans for Project Triangle, designed by Swiss architecture practice Herzog & de Meuron who also designed the iconic Bird's Nest Olympic stadium in Beijing, include offices, a conference centre and a 400-bed hotel as well as restaurants, cafes and gardens.
'Paris has always put economic development, employment and innovation at the heart of its ambition. This must now be translated into concrete which will reinforce its economic attractiveness,' said Deputy Mayor, Anne Hidalgo.
The design is a pyramidal block structure which won't cast shadows on adjacent buildings, according to the architects. While one side looks like a pyramid, the other is an ultra thin triangle resembling a shark's fin. It is also designed to optimize solar and wind power generation.
However, not everyone will welcome the return of high rise buildings to Paris. A recent survey found that 62% of Parisians are opposed to new skyscrapers being built. New skyscrapers will once again grace the skies of Paris after officials cleared the way for the first high rise construction since hi... more -
Ancient Peru pyramid spotted by satellite
Infrared and multispectral images reveal massive structure
A new remote sensing technology has peeled away layers of mud and rock near Peru's Cahuachi desert to reveal an ancient adobe pyramid, Italian researchers announced on Friday at a satellite imagery conference in Rome.
Nicola Masini and Rosa Lasaponara of Italy's National Research Council (CNR) discovered the pyramid by analyzing images from the satellite Quickbird, which they used to penetrate the Peruvian soil.
The researchers investigated a test area along the river Nazca. Covered by plants and grass, it was about a mile away from Cahuachi's archaeological site, which contains the remains of what is believed to be the world's biggest mud city.
Via Quickbird, Masini and colleagues collected hi-resolution infrared and multispectral images. After the researchers optimized the images with special algorithms, the result was a detailed visualization of a pyramid extending over a 9,000-square-mile area.
The discovery doesn't come as a surprise to archaeologists, since some 40 mounds at Cahuachi are believed to contain the remains of important structures.
"We know that many buildings are still buried under Cahuachi's sands, but until now, it was almost impossible to exactly locate them and detect their shape from an aerial view," Masini told Discovery News. "The biggest problem was the very low contrast between adobe, which is sun-dried earth, and the background subsoil."
Cahuachi is the best-known site of the Nazca civilization, which flourished in Peru between the first century B.C. and the fifth century A.D. and slid into oblivion by the time the Inca Empire rose to dominate the Andes. Infrared and multispectral images reveal massive structure ... more -
Satellite uncovers ancient pyramids
A new remote sensing technology has peeled away layers of mud and rock near Peru's Cahuachi desert to reveal an ancient adobe pyramid, Italian researchers announced on Friday at a satellite imagery conference in Rome. A new remote sensing technology has peeled away layers of mud and rock near Peru's Cahuachi desert to reveal an ancient adobe pyr... more
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Pictures: The New 7 Wonders Of The World
Beautiful pictures of The New 7 Wonders Of The World
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The Pyramids On Mars
The following video series is from Richard Hoagland’s United Nations briefing in 1992. He decodes the mathematics of Cydonia on Mars starting with the D&M Pyramid and relates it to the physics of planets and hyperdimensional objects. Why don’t we hear about this stuff in the mainstream media? The following video series is from Richard Hoagland’s United Nations briefing in 1992. He decodes the mathematics of Cydonia on Mars s... more
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Surprising Truth Behind the Construction of the Great Pyramids
According to the caller, the mysteries had actually been solved by Joseph Davidovits, Director of the Geopolymer Institute in St. Quentin, France, more than two decades ago. Davidovits claimed that the stones of the pyramids were actually made of a very early form of concrete created using a mixture of limestone, clay, lime, and water.
“It was at this point in the conversation that I burst out laughing,” says Barsoum. If the pyramids were indeed cast, he says, someone should have proven it beyond a doubt by now, in this day and age, with just a few hours of electron microscopy.
It turned out that nobody had completely proven the theory...yet. According to the caller, the mysteries had actually been solved by Joseph Davidovits, Director of the Geopolymer Institute in St. Quen... more -
The Images of Egypt
The Images of Egypt
Produced By:
VPK Solutions and Endless Eye Productions
Video was shot Feb. 2007
www.vpksolutions.com
www.endlesseye.org
Music By: Thievery Corporation
Satyam Shivam Sundaram
The Cosmic Game The Images of Egypt Produced By: VPK Solutions and Endless Eye Productions Video was shot Feb. 2007 www.vpksolutions.com ... more -
Climbing the Great Pyramid with Japanese Know-How
For nearly 5,000 years, the Great Pyramids of Egypt have instilled wonder and awe in mankind. In the last half a dozen centuries, they have also become a tempting lure for many to climb them - especially the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Pyramid climbing has been a temptation ever since the limestone casing of the Great Pyramid collapsed from an earthquake during the Middle Ages. Among some of the more famous climbers of the past was Mark Twain. He climbed up to the top in the mid-Nineteenth Century or rather he was dragged and carried up to the top by enterprising locals for a small bit of baksheesh (tip money). Financially and physically, Twain came off better than modern British author Graham Hancock.
Hancock, the author of Fingerprints of the Gods, believes that a very ancient civilization pre-dating the Egyptians built the pyramids on the Giza Plain long before Cheops, or Khufu, as the Ancient Egyptians called him, was even born. Unlike Twain, Hancock had to climb the Pyramid under his own steam while paying out close to $300 in bribes.
Pyramid climbing had been permissible up to the 1980s until Egyptian authorities forbade it following the deaths of several climbers. Despite the ban, the Great Pyramid is still climbed periodically as author Hancock had done, generally in the dead of night. Sometimes guards are bribed and guides hired to show intrepid climbers the way up. Other climbers prefer to forgo paying unnecessary bribes and find ways of avoiding opportunistic guards.
Interestingly enough, the leading nationality of these thrifty nocturnal climbers are the Japanese. Young Japanese travelers in Egypt have made Pyramid Climbing virtually a profession. They even have a handwritten book about how to do it in one of the hotels in Cairo.
"Never Give Up!" is the Japanese climber's motto for surmounting the Pyramid, or as it is written in their book: "Never Up Give!"
The temptation to climb the Great Pyramid proved too great even for me to ignore despite my academic background in historical preservation and, more importantly, my fear of heights. I had climbed pyramids in Mexico and a minor pyramid or two in Egypt but Cheops just laughed at me. After all, what were these pitiful things compared to the Great Pyramid?
At 450 feet (135 meters), the Great Pyramid is nothing to sneeze at, especially when you’re clinging to the side of it for dear life in the dark, 200 feet up and a sneeze would send you tumbling to the ground in a broken bloody heap.
Before going, I diligently consulted the Japanese book for the necessary information. The book was a compilation of various personal accounts and advice from successful climbers written in both Japanese and English. In addition there were detailed maps on how to sneak into the area and which side to climb. For nearly 5,000 years, the Great Pyramids of Egypt have instilled wonder and awe in mankind. In the last half a dozen centuries, they... more -
Ancient Egyptian pharaoh's boat to "sail" once more
Archaeologists will excavate hundreds of fragments of an ancient Egyptian wooden boat entombed in an underground chamber next to Giza's Great Pyramid and try to reassemble the craft, Egyptologists announced Saturday.
The 4,500-year-old vessel is the sister ship of a similar boat removed in pieces from another pit in 1954 and painstakingly reconstructed. Experts believe the boats were meant to ferry the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid in the afterlife.
Starting Saturday, tourists were allowed to view images of the inside of the second boat pit from a camera inserted through the a hole in the chamber's limestone ceiling. The video image, transmitted onto a small TV monitor at the site, showed layers of crisscrossing beams and planks on the floor of the dark pit.
"You can smell the past," said Zahi Hawass, director of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Experts will begin removing around 600 pieces of timber in November, said professor Sakuji Yoshimura of Japan's Waseda University, who is helping lead the restoration effort with the antiquities council.
The discovery of the boat pits more than 50 years ago by workmen clearing a large mound of wind-blown debris from the south side of the Great Pyramid is considered one of the most significant finds on the plateau. They are the oldest vessels to have survived from antiquity.
The reconstructed ship is on display in a museum built above the pit where it was discovered. It is a narrow vessel measuring 142 feet with a rectangular deckhouse and long, interlocking oars that soar overhead.
The cedar timbers of its curved hull are lashed together with hemp rope in a technique used until recent times by traditional shipbuilders along the Red Sea, Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean.
The unexcavated boat, made from Lebanese cedar and Egyptian acacia trees, is thought to be of similar design, but smaller and less well preserved.
John Darnell, an Egyptologist at Yale University, said new research into the second boat could fill in some blanks about the significance of the vessels and help determine whether they ever actually plied Nile River waterways or were of purely spiritual import.
"In Egypt, almost everything real had its counterpart meaning or significance in the spiritual world. But there's a lot of debate as to whether these vessels ever were used or not," Darnell said.
Those who argue the vessels may have touched water point to rope marks on the wood that could have been caused by the rope becoming wet and then shrinking as it dried.
But Hawass believes these were symbolic vessels, not funerary boats used to bring the pharaoh Khufu's embalmed remains up the Nile from the ancient capital of Memphis for burial in the Great Pyramid, the oldest and largest of Giza's pyramids.
He said solar symbols found inside the second pit offer more evidence that those who disassembled and buried the boats believed Khufu's soul would travel from his tomb in the pyramid through a connecting air shaft to the boat chambers and that he would use the boats to circle the heavens, like the sun god, taking one boat by day and the other by night. Archaeologists will excavate hundreds of fragments of an ancient Egyptian wooden boat entombed in an underground chamber next to Giza&... more -
Construction resumes on phantom hotel after 16 years
"North Korea's phantom hotel is stirring back to life. Once dubbed by Esquire magazine as "the worst building in the history of mankind," the 105-story Ryugyong Hotel is back under construction after a 16-year lull in the capital of one of the world's most reclusive and destitute countries.
According to foreign residents in Pyongyang, Egypt's Orascom group has recently begun refurbishing the top floors of the three-sided pyramid-shaped hotel whose 330-metre (1,083 ft) frame dominates the Pyongyang skyline.
The firm has put glass panels into the concrete shell, installed telecommunications antennas -- even though the North forbids its citizens to own mobile phones -- and put up an artist's impression of what it will look like.
An official with the group said its Orascom Telecom subsidiary was involved in the project but gave no details.
The hotel consists of three wings rising at 75 degree angles capped by several floors arranged in rings supposed to hold five revolving restaurants and an observation deck.
A creaky building crane has for years sat unused at the top of the 3,000-room hotel in a city where tourists are only occasionally allowed to visit.
"It is not a beautiful design. It carries little iconic or monumental significance, but sheer muscular and massive presence," said Lee Sang Jun, a professor of architecture at Yonsei University in Seoul.
The communist North started construction in 1987, in a possible fit of jealousy at South Korea, which was about to host the 1988 Summer Olympics and show off to the world the success of its rapidly developing economy.
A concrete shell built by North Korea's Paektu Mountain Architects & Engineers emerged over the next few years. A proud North Korea put a likeness of the hotel on postage stamps and boasted about the structure in official media.
According to intelligence sources, then North Korean leader Kim Il-sung saw the hotel as a symbol of his big dreams for the state he founded, while his son and current leader Kim Jong-il was a driving force in its construction.
But by 1992, worked was halted. The North's main benefactor the Soviet Union had dissolved a year earlier and funding for the hotel had vanished. For a time, the North airbrushed images of the Ryugyong Hotel from photographs.
As the North's economy took a deeper turn for the worse in the 1990s the empty shell became a symbol of the country's failure, earning nicknames "Hotel of Doom" and "Phantom Hotel."
Yonsei's Lee and other architects said there were questions raised about whether the hotel was structurally sound and a few believed completing the structure could cause it to collapse.
It would cost up to $2 billion to finish the Ryugyong Hotel and make it safe, according to estimates in South Korean media. That is equivalent to about 10 percent of the North's annual economic output.
Bruno Giberti, associate head of California Polytechnic State University's Department of Architecture, said the project was typical of what has been produced recently in many cities trying to show their emerging wealth by constructing gigantic edifices that were not related in scale to anything else around them.
"If this is the worst building in the world, the runners up are in Vegas and Shanghai," said Giberti." "North Korea's phantom hotel is stirring back to life. Once dubbed by Esquire magazine as "the worst building in the hi... more -
Mysterious cave at Mexican pyramid
Archaeologists are opening a cave sealed for more than 30 years deep beneath a Mexican pyramid to look for clues about the mysterious collapse of one of ancient civilization's largest cities.
The soaring Teotihuacan stone pyramids, now a major tourist site about an hour outside Mexico City, were discovered by the ancient Aztecs around 1500, not long before the arrival of Spanish explorers to Mexico.
But little is known about the civilization that built the immense city, with its ceremonial architecture and geometric temples, and then torched and abandoned it around the year 700.
Archaeologists are now revisiting a cave system that is buried 20 feet (6 meters) beneath the towering Pyramid of the Sun and extends into a tunnel stretching for 295 feet (90 meters) with a height of 8 feet (2.4 meters).
They say new excavations begun this month could be the key to unlocking information about the sacred rituals of the people who inhabited the city, later dubbed "The Place Where Men Become Gods" by the Aztecs, who believed it was a divine site. Archaeologists are opening a cave sealed for more than 30 years deep beneath a Mexican pyramid to look for clues about the mysterious ... more -
Archeologists open secret cave under Mexican pyramid
Archeologists are opening a cave sealed for more than 30 years deep beneath a Mexican pyramid to look for clues about the mysterious collapse of one of ancient civilization's largest cities.
The soaring Teotihuacan stone pyramids, now a major tourist site about an hour outside Mexico City, were discovered by the ancient Aztecs around 1500 AD, not long before the arrival of Spanish explorers to Mexico.
But little is known about the civilization that built the immense city, with its ceremonial architecture and geometric temples, and then torched and abandoned it around 700 AD.
Archeologists are now revisiting a cave system that is buried 20 feet beneath the towering Pyramid of the Sun and extends into a tunnel stretching for some 295 feet (90 meters) with a height of 8 feet. Archeologists are opening a cave sealed for more than 30 years deep beneath a Mexican pyramid to look for clues about the mysterious c... more -
The Sphinx: whether the weather be wet
A collection of unusual aerial photographs of the Sphinx on the Giza Plateau in Egypt, music by Patrick Leonard/Shenkar - "pudusu" from their CD "udistam". The Sphinx is classic in its structure and form. Its body is a beautifully proportioned carving out of one piece of limestone bedrock on the edge of the Giza Plateau, although curiously, the head of the sphinx is small. The Sphinx of Giza is about 240' long and 66' high. John Anthony West and Dr. Robert Schoch, a geologist/geophysicist, from Boston University, presented the idea that the weathering on the body of the Sphinx and walls of the Sphinx enclosure had been created by precipitation - over a long enough period of time to create the deep fissures and smooth rounded shapes you can see, particularly on the west and south walls of the Sphinx enclosure. Detective Frank Domingo, a senior forensic officer with the NYPD applied his expertise of identification techniques to compare the facial structure between the Sphinx, and the Pharoah Chephren from a statue in the Cairo Museum. The attribution of Chephren being the builder of the Sphinx is partly because of this discovery and dedication given by proxy, reports suggesting they look similar. Take a good look. Check out John Anthony West's YouTube Channels: JAWSPHINX99 and MYSTERYOFTHESPHINX. For contact re: "pudusu" from UDISTAM, udistam@yahoo.com, and Shenkar - www.myspace.com/shenkarworld A collection of unusual aerial photographs of the Sphinx on the Giza Plateau in Egypt, music by Patrick Leonard/Shenkar - "pudusu... more
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'Missing pyramid' unearthed
Egyptian archaeologists have uncovered the "missing pyramid" of a pharaoh and a ceremonial procession road where high priests carried mummified remains of sacred bulls, Egypt's antiquities chief said Thursday.
The pyramid -- of which only the base remains -- is believed to be that of King Menkauhor, an obscure pharaoh who ruled for only eight years more than 4,000 years ago.
In 1842, German archaeologist Karl Richard Lepsius mentioned Menkauhor's pyramid among his finds at Saqqara, calling it the "Headless Pyramid" because its top was missing. But the desert sands covered Lepsius' discovery, and no archaeologist since was able to find it.
Only the pyramid's base -- or the superstructure as archeologists call it -- was found after a 25-foot-high mound of sand was removed over the past year and a half. The base was in a 15 foot-deep pit dug out by workers, with heaps of huge rocks marking its entrance and walls. A burial chamber also was discovered.
Archaeologists have not found a cartouche -- a pharoah's name in hieroglyphs -- of the pyramid's owner. Egyptian archaeologists have uncovered the "missing pyramid" of a pharaoh and a ceremonial procession road where high priest... more -
Egypt uncovers missing pyramid
Egyptian archaeologists have uncovered a missing pyramid believed to be over 4,000 years old. The pyramid is said to have been built by a little-known pharaoh, King Menkauhor, and was first described in 1842. Only the base remains.
It's pretty cool, but even with just the base left, and shifting sands, how do you lose a pyramid? You'd think it's something you'd want to keep track of.... Egyptian archaeologists have uncovered a missing pyramid believed to be over 4,000 years old. The pyramid is said to have been built b... more -
Guilty Pleasures: Maps!
With Brett as your guide, get lost in online maps.
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Obama Assassination
just a prediction....... obama's assassination will be the neo cons... next 9/11..to pass new terror laws.. and tighten their grip...
what do u think??? just a prediction....... obama's assassination will be the neo cons... next 9/11..to pass new terror laws.. and tighten their gr... more -
Evil, has found a willing servant
listen to what the kids are chanting.... for pagan bush ritual
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Worlds Largest Penny Pyramid built by Marcelo Bezos
Worlds Largest Penny Pyramid built by Marcelo Bezos to raise awareness for colorectal cancer and the screening process. Screening Saves Lives!
The Penny Pyramid Project and the President of Rainbow Children’s Academy have announced a collaboration and pilot program to establish what they hope will the first of many annual Penny Pyramid Collection Drives for charity.
It is estimated that in the State of Florida alone there are over http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/12000.html 7,624,378 households with an average count of 500 pennies in each. This number represents over 3.8 billion coins or 38,000,000 dollars in pennies that are out of circulation. It is the projects goal to tap into this hidden pool of coins as a financial resource to be used towards community improvements and charitable donations.
Full Story : http://www.worldamazingrecords.com Worlds Largest Penny Pyramid built by Marcelo Bezos to raise awareness for colorectal cancer and the screening process. Screening Save... more -
12,000-year-old temple found in Turkey
A temple has been discovered in Turkey. The significance of this discovery cannot be overstated. Such a find has the potential to alter forever the existing paradigm of human development and demonstrates conclusively that complex societies existed in our most remote past, thousands of years before Stonehenge and the Giza Pyramids were built. A temple has been discovered in Turkey. The significance of this discovery cannot be overstated. Such a find has the potential to alte... more
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Pyramids
