A one kilometre long swimming pool in Chile has set the world record for the world's largest outdoor swimming pool.
Situated on the Chilean coast, it provides a amazing play area of ostensibly endless crystal-clear blue water.
The lagoon employs cutting-edge technology that allows it to "harvest, filter and enduringly recalculate sea water", according to biochemist and businessman Fernando Fischmann, who heads Crystal Lagoons Corporation, the company that designed the mammoth pool.
"This advance provides something that until now was not theoretically possible - the generation of enormous lots of water in a crystalline state to provide a beach life environment and aquatic sports at the top level," he says.
Fischmann says companies are keen to take advantage of the way lagoons form "impressive artificial paradises, even in inhospitable areas".
The San Alfonso pool:
* Is 8 hectares in surface area or the equivalent of 6,000 standard-size 8-metre-long swimming pools.
* It easily dwarfs the next biggest pool - the Orthlieb in Casablanca, Morocco - which measures 150m x 100m.
* The lagoon's water temperature in summer is 26C, nine degrees warmer than the ocean it sits alongside.
* Its waters are transparent to a depth of 35 metres.
* It cost approximately US$3.5 million to build and
the maintenance cost is low, the equivalent of 1/4 of a golf course (18 holes) only!
* The pool fills itself with 250,000 cubic meters of water from the Pacific
This is submarine “Typhoon” as it was called in NATO documents or “Shark” as it was called in Russia. It is measured to be the biggest submarine in the world, with over than 170 meters (515 feet) long and 23 meter (70 feet) wide. It can carry 20 ballistic nuclear missiles and there were only six of those built. Only 3 left intact, but are staying now out of repair with guard control blocks separate according to the agreement between USSR and USA signed by M. Gorbachev. Without those they are way too peaceful.
