The world’s longest suspension bridge stretches two continents and takes a matter of minutes to cross.

The soul-crushing daily commute is a factor of life many of us are all-too-familiar with, and according to INRIX, the average US driver spends 51 hours stuck behind the wheel every year, losing two days and wasting an eye-watering sum in fuel.

It’s no wonder many of us look to escape the rat race with a vacation or two, though a road trip while on holiday could be a little off putting if you feel like you waste too much of your life sat on the highway in your car.

But what if I told you there’s an incredible bridge that connects Europe with Asia and cuts journey times by a whopping 93 percent?

The 1915 Çanakkale Bridge in Turkey (Burak Akay/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

That’s what Turkish officials had in mind when they decided to construct the world’s longest suspension bridge, the 1915 Çanakkale Bridge, which stretches from northwestern Turkey across the Dardanelles Strait, a passage of water connecting the Aegean Sea and the Sea or Marmara.

The bridge connects Gelibolu, in the European side of Turkey, with the town of Lapseki found in the Asian region in the country.

This means it connects two continents with tarmac and abandons the need for the 90-minute ferry to get to the other side.

Now, backpackers, travellers and commuters can reach the other side in just six minutes.

Despite its ‘1915’ reference, construction on the bridge started in Mach 2017 and was open to the public on March 2022.

Not a sight you want to see (Getty stock Images)

Turkish officials used the historically significant date in the name of the bridge to honor an important Ottoman victory in the first world war which sparked a chain of events that ultimately led to the declaration of the Republic of Turkey in 1923.

And that’s not the only nod to Turkey’s history in the bridge as its 2,023 meter stretch pays homage to the year 2023, the year the country celebrated the centenary of the founding of the Turkish Republic.

Even the height of the bridge has some meaning behind it, with 318 meters symbolizing the date of March 18 when Turkey commemorates the soldiers killed during Gallipoli.

Anyway, as mentioned already, the suspension bridge spans 2,023 meters which means it surpasses Japan’s famous Akashi Kaikyo Bridge built in 1998 by 32 meters.

The Turkish bridge wasn’t exactly cheap to build either, with an eye-watering price of $2.7 billion.

Japan’s Akashi Kaikyo Bridge has been dropped down to the second largest suspension bridge in the world (Getty Images)

“Turkey has overtaken Japan, which has the longest bridge in the world in terms of the midspan, and has taken the first place,” said President Erdogan during the inauguration ceremony.

South Korean Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum added: “The 1915 Canakkale Bridge will leave this history of collision and conflict behind and will be a bridge between East and West, starting a new era of peace and prosperity.”

If you’ve ever wondered why there are no bridges in other key points on Earth, experts have been weighing in.

For example, why don’t we have a bridge over the 4,000-mile long Amazon river?

Well, that’s not really a possibility, even though it would seem like an obvious decision to make.

Speaking to Live Science, Walter Kaufmann, chair of Structural Engineering (Concrete Structures and Bridge Design) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, said the explanation is simple: “There is no sufficiently pressing need for a bridge across the Amazon.”

Despite its length, many of the areas located near the river are sparsely populated. As a result, there aren’t any major roads for a bridge to connect to.

Scientists in Japan discovered $26,290,780,000 worth of Earth minerals which will keep its economy going for at least the next decade.

A survey by The Nippon Foundation and the University of Tokyo found a field of dense manganese nodules on the seabed of Minami-Tori-shima island – some 1,200 miles from Japan’s bustling capital.

The nodules, 5,700 meters below sea level, contained millions of metric tons of cobalt and nickel.

They were thought to have formed over millions of years as metals transported in the ocean attached themselves to fish bones and stuck to the seabed, according to Nikkei Asia.

Cobalt and nickel are two of the crucial components needed to create electric vehicle (EV) batteries and are also used to make jet engines, gas turbines and in chemical processing.

The manganese nodules found on the sea bed (The Nippon Foundation)

The survey found around 610,000 metric tons of cobalt and 740,000 metric tons of nickel, which equates to a staggering amount of money.

At the time of writing, one metric ton of cobalt is worth $24,300 while nickel is worth $15,497, according to market figures from Trading Economics.

Doing some simple maths, it means the 610,000 metric tons of cobalt found was worth $14,823,000,000 while the 740,000 tones of nickel comes in at $11,467,780,000.

That gives us an eye-watering total of $26,290,780,000.

Of course, like any commodity, the markets can fluctuate meaning at times the minerals could be worth even more – or less.

Prices can also change based on demand pressures from the EV and energy storage industries.

The deposits also contain copper (The Nippon Foundation)

But between April and May this year, some 230 million tons of the rare minerals were discovered after a team surveyed 100 seabed sites using remotely operated underwater vehicles.

Moreover, the deposits are thought to contain copper – another valuable element.

Interestingly, these manganese nodules were initially discovered in a 2016 survey and experts claimed that multiple had formed around teeth belonging to prehistoric shark, the Megalodon.

Following the most recent survey, Yasuhiro Kato, a professor specializing in resource geology at the University of Tokyo, said that excavators now plan to lift ‘three million tons annually’ from the deposits.

The discovery could keep Japan’s economy topped up for the next decade (The Nippon Foundation)

He claimed that this procedure would allow development to continue while ‘minimizing the impact on the marine environment’.

The team will therefore utilise overseas mining vessels to lift several thousand tons of nodules daily from 2025.

By utilising the cobalt and nickel from the ocean, the country will be able to decrease its dependency on other countries and satiate the internal demand for EV batteries, according to Interesting Engineering.

“Ultimately, we expect that our research outcomes will help boost Japan’s growth by establishing a domestic supply chain stretching from ‘resource-mining’ to ‘manufacturing’, and make Japan a science-technology, and ocean-oriented nation in a true sense of word,” read a press release from the University of Tokyo.

Traveling is fun right? But the one thing a lot of us complain about when globe trotting is the actual traveling part.

Sitting for hours on end in cramped spaces, broken sleep and bad food, if there was a way for us to cut our traveling time in half and still make it to all the beautiful destinations the world has to offer, we’d take it right?

Well, what if I told you there’s a bridge that connects Europe with Asia and cuts a journey time by a whopping 93 percent?

Sounds ideal, right?

Turkish officials had the same train of thought so decided to build the world’s longest suspension bridge in the from of the 1915 Çanakkale Bridge.

The bridge connects Europe and Asia. Why are more people not talking about this?! (Burak Akay/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The extremely long piece of road stretches across the length of the Dardanelles Strait, a passage of water connecting the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Marmara in that part of the world.

The bridge connects Gelibolu, in the European side of Turkey, with the town of Lapseki found in the Asian region in the country.

Connecting two continents with tarmac, the hugely impressive bridge means those passing between the two places no longer need to take a ferry, taking approximately 90 minutes to get to the other side.

Now, those who use the bridge get to the other side in just six minutes.

Can you imagine?!

Missed your flight? Don’t worry, we’ll take the bridge. Maybe it’s not that simple but it’s a nice thought. (KSChong / Getty Images)

Opening in 2022, the bridge constructed by both Turkish and South Korean companies only took five years to complete.

Though it was rather pricey, at a cost of $2.7 billion.

“Turkey has overtaken Japan, which has the longest bridge in the world in terms of the midspan, and has taken the first place,” said President Erdogan during the inauguration ceremony.

South Korean Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum added: “The 1915 Canakkale Bridge will leave this history of collision and conflict behind and will be a bridge between East and West, starting a new era of peace and prosperity.”

The bridge has plenty of symbolism to mark its importance and many nods to the history of Turkey.

For example, its size of 2,023 meters pays homage to the year 2023, the year the country celebrated the centenary of the founding of the Turkish Republic.

Even the height of the bridge has some meaning behind it, with 318 meters symbolizing the date of March 18 when Turkey commemorates the soldiers killed during Gallipoli.

If you’ve ever wondered why there are no bridges in other areas of the planet, experts have been weighing in.

For example, wouldn’t it make sense to have a bridge over the 4,000-mile long Amazon river?

The bridge opened in 2022 and has broken records. (Burak Akay/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Well, that’s not really a possibility, even though it would seem like an obvious decision to make.

Speaking to Live Science, Walter Kaufmann, chair of Structural Engineering (Concrete Structures and Bridge Design) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, said the explanation is simple: “There is no sufficiently pressing need for a bridge across the Amazon.”

Despite its length, many of the areas located near the river are sparsely populated.

As a result, there aren’t any major roads for a bridge to connect to.

China is home to the world’s longest bridge, spanning 102 miles, which conspiracy theorists happen to be obsessed with.

We all know by now that the country is no stranger to mammoth projects, whether that’s a hydropower plant so powerful it’s slowing the Earth’s rotation, or the planet’s most expensive megaproject.

Back in 2011, China unveiled the Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge, which took four years and 10,000 workers to build.

The Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge (Edward L. Zhao/Getty Images)

It currently holds the Guinness world record for the world’s longest bridge at around 102 miles long – or 538,560 feet. That’s the length of almost 90 Brooklyn Bridges end-to-end, for some context.

Costing around $8.5 billion, the structure is part of the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway and links the cities of Shanghai and Nanjing.

Commute times between the two locations were cut from around four and a half hours to just two once the bridge was operational.

The Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge, roughly 31 meters off the ground, signified a major engineering milestone for the country. Constructing a bridge of such scale would’ve been no mean feat, especially when you consider the challenge of building it across varying terrain.

The bridge crosses low rice paddies, densely populated cities, sections of the Yangtze River Delta and a few miles of open water across the Yangcheng Lake in Suzhou.

The bridge cut commute times from four and a half hours to just two (LUPOO/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

It’s also been reinforced to withstand natural disasters – including earthquakes and typhoons – as well as hits from naval vessels that weigh up to 300,000 tons.

Like all good things, though, it soon became victim to the swirling vortex of disinformation that is the internet.

Danyang–Kunshan has been widely – and wrongly – cited by flat Earth conspiracy theorists online.

Once-viral posts claim the bridge is completely straight, with ‘no curve’ which people say ‘proves’ the Earth must be flat.

Theorists go on to share photos of the bridge – or sometimes, totally different bridges – from unusual angles in an attempt to create evidence to support their claim.

Flat earth conspiracy theorists are obsessed with the world’s longest bridge (Adastra/Getty Images)

Those who believe the Earth is round have fought back online to disprove the theories, showing how even a pool cue that appears curved from one angle can look completely straight from another.