These days, in the heart of Las Vegas, be careful while driving down that strip, illuminated by flashy lights, at night with your car. Because you may encounter an object at any moment. A bright object. It could also be a huge Moon. Or a basketball... This is the largest luminous globe in the world. Sphere! This huge sphere that everyone is talking about these days is the new meeting point of Las Vegas. It turned on its lights for the first time on July 4th, the Independence Day of the USA. There are 1.2 million light diodes on the outside. These are programmable lights. It can perform amazing shows. It can transform from the Moon to the Earth. It can make fireworks shows. It tries to attract attention with lots of visual shows. This is a quiet but bright new way of touting. Just like the magic ball in fairy tales, it is possible to show almost anything with it. So much so that soon they will even broadcast the concerts that will take place indoors on the globe. Oh, and it can turn into a huge basketball. This basketball is important because it has an ironic story that is not well known. Now I will tell you that story. James Dolan. The billionaire who started the story of the globe. In fact, he is not someone who became a billionaire with his own success. Thanks to his Dad. Mr. Charles Dolan is the founder of Cablevision and HBO. Therefore, his son was born and raised in such great wealth. He also owns the New York Knicks basketball team. But I wish He wasn’t, because after he bought it, the team started breaking records. Consecutive defeat records! But James Dolan doesn't seem to take this situation very seriously. After selling Cablevision in 2016, he focused on MSG, aka Madison Square Garden. The word Square here actually refers to, square shape, but look at the shape of this legendary event space in New York. Yes, this is Madison Square Garden. Did something catch your attention? It has a circular shape, not a square. This building is also equipped with lots of lights, a visual show. So Dolan, the owner of this place, somewhere in his mind, has a weakness for round, circular and spherical shapes. We hear that the idea of a sphere was suggested to him in an interview given by an employee in 2016. In 2017, the location where Sphere is currently located was opened. The real event is in 2019. Dolan is speaking on CNBC. He says his dream is to build a futuristic, spherical arena. It's no wonder why the Knicks failed so much after all these. Because Dolan's passion in the beginning was not this basketball, but this basketball. This is the dream of a building different from the buildings we are used to. Like the shape of pyramids. There is also a pyramid-shaped hotel in Las Vegas by the way, somewhere behind there. Or like NEOM, which is planned to be built in Saudi Arabia, for which I also made a video, It is straight like a line. The globe is actually not that unique, those who remember my permaculture video have seen the EDEN project there. But this sphere shows itself differently. In fact, the construction of the sphere was decided in 2018 and it was planned to be opened in 2021. But as we all know the world come to a stop for a couple of years. the intervention of COVID delayed things a bit. At that time, the project budget was calculated as 1.2 billion dollars. However, due to the global supply chain crisis and inflation, the cost of the project reached up to, wait for it, 2.3 billion dollars. The magnitude of that project. All that money for a big, glowing globe! This expenditure also brought it to first place as the most expensive entertainment center in Las Vegas. The exterior of this huge sphere, 157 m wide and 112 m high, is covered with programmable lights. It may seem surprising, but it is possible to set everything up by connecting a simple laptop. Of course, designing these shows is a whole other matter of expertise. Leave aside the fact that this sphere illuminates the sky, you can already guess how bright it is on its own. So much so that it has created anxiety for the people living in the surrounding area because it must be dark during the hours we need to sleep. It is known that when it is bright, it causes sleep and health problems. But of course, on the other hand, Las Vegas is an entertainment center. It is one of the cities that never sleeps. However, when they planned to build the same globe in London, I must say that they faced a harsh reaction due to the light pollution issue. Maybe we love these luminous spheres because we know deep down that we are in such a spaceship, a blue luminous sphere, who knows. And a new one joined in, as a performance center. In addition to the light pollution it creates, it is necessary to consider what effects it will have on humans and the environment. It's not always negativity.
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Researched and Written by: Ögetay Kayalı
Edited and Edited by: Barış Özcan
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Full text of the video and sources used:
barisozcan.com
12 июл 2023
