In today’s article, we will delve into the world of the heaviest things on Earth, the most powerful and impressive of all man-made objects.
With everything from massive buildings to colossal machines, I’ve done my homework and rounded up the 10 heaviest objects in the world, all listed in several categories.
These items are sure to wow you (and break your weight). Obviously, I wasn’t placing objects weighing billions of pounds on the bathroom scale.
That’s why I’ve made sure to provide some very practical comparisons and quick facts to help you better understand the weight of each item. 10 Heaviest Objects in the World Before we get into the specifics of each object, it’s worth noting that due to the logistical difficulty of measuring the weight and weight of such objects, their total weight is estimated from data available at the time of compiling this list.
So without further ado, let’s start with the least difficult subject on our list. Washington Monument (Washington, DC); The 162.2 million pound Washington Monument is a single imposing stone structure located on the National Mall in Washington, DC and attracts over 500,000 visitors each year. It stands 555 feet (169 meters) tall and weighs a whopping 90,854 tons (82,506 metric tons).
Despite its enormous weight, the Washington Monument is still the heaviest man-made object in the world. However, that 162 million pounds makes it the heaviest in the US.
For reference, £162.2 million equals 12,135 African elephants! In addition, the Washington Monument is made of more than 30 thousand granite blocks.
You could build 30 average sized houses from one of these blocks! Submerged communication cable (under the oceans); £176.4 million Hi mate!
And the heaviest of them all weighs a whopping 176.4 million pounds! Think of £176.4 million differently.
The largest animal in history is the blue whale, weighing 199 tons (or 438,719.5 pounds). It would take approximately 510 blue whales to match the world’s heaviest submerged communications cable.
Yes, that’s almost 3% of all remaining blue whales worldwide. Another interesting aspect is that these cables can stretch for thousands and thousands of kilometers, even longer than the distance from New York to Australia! For example, in 2017, AT&T operated nearly 90 undersea cable systems that stretch a total of more than 438,000 miles, enough to circle the Earth’s equator 17 times. Freight Train (Western Australia); £199.5 million Next on our list is a 20-year-old freight train in Western Australia.
It is the heaviest freight train ever and also the longest at 4.5 miles and 199.5 million pounds. To put this weight into perspective.
The General Sherman Tree, also known as the Giant Sequoia, is by far the heaviest living thing in Earth’s history and the largest living organism (by volume) on the planet. These redwoods of almost unimaginable size can reach a height of 311 feet and weigh upwards of 6,000 tons or 12 million pounds.
Even so, you would need about 16 and a half giant redwoods to match the weight of this one extra-large freight train. Nimitz-class aircraft carrier (various); At 204 million pounds, the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers are the largest Warcrafts ever built.
And you can bet the colossal mass held entire airports’ worth of planes at one time. Let’s look at £204 million from a different angle.
According to a University of Idaho study, the average NFL player weighs 245.86 pounds. At 32 teams with 53 players on each roster, that’s 1,696 players winning a total of £416,978.
You would need 489 National Football League players to balance the weight of one Nimitz carrier. SSCV crane vessel Sleipnir; 602 million pounds The SSCV Sleipnir crane weighs a staggering 273,000 tons (fully loaded)!
This craft is a marvel of engineering and it’s amazing to think how much weight it can lift and move with ease. Sleipnir is truly a sea beast with two rotating cranes that can lift a whopping 10,000 tons each!
No wonder this vessel is the largest crane vessel in the world with its eight masts and aerodynamic pontoons designed to reduce air resistance and ensure smoother movements under higher sea states. So what exactly is 273 tons?
Sleipnir makes Titanic look like a bath toy. Titanic weighed around 52,000 metric tons, less than a fifth of Sleipnir’s weight.
In the 1980s, Nicolae Ceausescu ordered the palace to be built. However, he never saw the completion of the project since he was executed by a civil uprising in 1989, five years before the palace was completed. The Palace of Parliament is the heaviest building on Earth at a ridiculous £1.6 billion.
It is also the second largest office building in the world after the Pentagon. Gullfaks C oil installation depot (North Sea); 3 billion pounds First installed back on November 4th 1989 and pumped in a year later.
The Gullfaks C oil storage facility located in the North Sea around Norway is the heaviest movable man-made object in history. This mammoth facility produces over 250,000 barrels of oil a day, so it makes sense that it weighs 3 billion pounds (or 1,500,000 tons).
Well, both Gullfaks C and the famous Statue of Liberty are seen as massive, man-made objects that would make you go “woah” when you see them. But you’d need about 6,000 freedom status clones to break even. the weight of the Gullfaks C. Great Pyramid of Khufu (Egypt); £12 billion The Great Pyramid of Khufu, also known as the Pyramid of Giza, is a true wonder of the world. While it’s not quite the largest pyramid in the world (the Cholula Pyramid sits on this site), it’s still the largest of the Egyptian pyramids and the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the World. It consists of 2.3 million stone blocks, each weighing approximately two and a half tons.
Do the math and that’s a whopping 12 billion pounds (or 5,750,000 tons).
Think of it this way: This thing is so massive it makes Godzilla look like a little gecko. How better to compare the suite of Khufu’s pyramid with the suite of another wonder of the world, the Eiffel Tower?
This iconic structure may not be as old as Khufu’s pyramid, but it’s still a heavyweight champion in its own right. But in terms of weight, it’s like comparing a feather to a bowling ball.
In fact, it would take about 600 Eiffel Towers to equal the weight of Khufu’s pyramid.
That’s a lot of metal! Three Gorges Dam (China); 20.8 billion pounds In addition to being a true engineering marvel, the Three Gorges Dam in China is also the second heaviest man-made object on Earth, weighing a whopping 20.82 billion pounds (or 10.42 million tons). In terms of installed capacity, the plant is the largest in the world, producing more than 22,500 megawatts of electricity!
This massive dam is approximately 2.3 km long and 185 meters high, taller than the Statue of Liberty. In fact, this dam is so huge that scientists believe it could actually slow the Earth’s rotation if it ever blocked it. its maximum amount of water, extending each day by 0.06 microseconds. How big could £20.82 billion be?
Well, the largest known elephant in history was a 24,000-kilogram male elephant from Angola.
To match the power of the Three Gorges Dam, you would need 867,500 giant Angolan elephants. Also remember the Nimitz class aircraft carriers we mentioned earlier?
If you could get your hands on about 123 fully loaded warships of them, that would be enough. The Great Wall of China; 116 billion pounds This may shock some, but no man-made object in history is heavier than the Great Wall of China.
At 13,000 miles long, it is also the longest wall in the world. Although you can’t actually see it from space, this wall has enough bragging rights to outlast the rest of civilization.
The largest animal in history is the blue whale weighing 173 tons or 346,000 pounds to match the Great Wall of China; you would have to clone that particular Blue Whale 335,260 times.
Sadly, there are only about 25,000 (at best) blue whales left in the world today. Honorable Mentions Below is another set of objects that didn’t quite make our list of the heaviest things on Earth.
This massive aircraft is the largest commercial aircraft currently in production, with a maximum take-off weight of around 975,000 pounds (442,253 kg).
And it can carry up to 660 passengers – it’s like a small village traveling through the air. The Large Hadron Collider (Switzerland/France), the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world, is located at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland.
The LHC weighs about 38,000 tons (83.7 million pounds), which is about the same weight as your mom. ITER Tokamak (France) The ITER Tokamak in France is currently under construction a giant fusion reactor designed to replicate the process that powers the sun and other stars.
This massive machine weighs a staggering 23,000 tons (50.7 million pounds), roughly the equivalent of 3,176 average-sized cars.
It stands at approximately 2,717 feet (828 m) and is more than twice as tall as the Eiffel Tower. The Burj Khalifa weighs approximately 500,000 tons (1.1 billion pounds), equivalent to the weight of approximately 100,000 elephants. in perspective, it is equivalent to the weight of 6 USS Gerald R.
Ford aircraft carriers or 1,818 blue whales. Statue of Unity (India): The Statue of Unity, a towering bronze effigy of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the Indian statesman and revered freedom fighter, is a testament to the sheer human capacity for monumental achievement. This imposing structure is an impressive 597 feet tall (equivalent to 182 meters) and weighs a whopping 1.6 billion pounds (approximately 730,000 kilograms), an amount equivalent to the weight of 2,186 elephants! The statue is a masterpiece of engineering, containing 1,700 tons of bronze and 1,850 tons of bronze cladding, and was produced by over 3,000 hard workers who worked for a grueling 56 months to bring this wonder to life.
The Statue of Unity is undoubtedly a true representation of human ingenuity and creativity. Conclusion: Some of the heaviest objects in the world are truly jaw-dropping, from the Washington Monument to the crane vessel SSCV Sleipnir. As already mentioned, I’ We selected these objects based on information from reliable sources, such as Guinness World Records and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This list also provides practical comparisons and quick facts, providing insight into the logistical and engineering feats required to create and move such massive objects.