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(another) 5 extremely cool research facilities

i’m currently hooked on these structures so, hot on the heels of the first 5, here’s another bunch of amazing facilities and fascinating machines that have been created for research purposes. there are still plenty more so it probably won’t stop here. thanks for all the suggestions following the first 5.

the phenomenal photo above shows superconducting coils within the large helical device in japan, a machine which holds the title of ‘largest superconducting stellarator in the world’. these huge winding coils are used to generate magnetic fields strong enough to confine a plasma in the centre which needs to be heated to the point where a controlled nuclear fusion reaction will occur - 100 million degrees.

you can read more about the device here. a mammoth version of the photo is here.

built in 1969, this brilliantly shiny oddity is the 8-storey high odeillo solar furnace in france: at present the largest on the planet. the 63 smaller mirrors on the hillside reflect the sun onto the huge parabolic reflector you see in the photos, this in turn reflecting the solar radiation very precisely onto a point just 18 metres in front of the parabola. using this method, temperatures can reach an unbelievably hot 3400°C. the incredible amount of heat generated by the furnace is used for research in many areas including high temperature solar engineering (advanced solar power systems, solar chemistry, etc.), photo-physics and chemistry applied physics. the official site is here.

measuring a whopping 60ft x 60ft, this is the largest calorimetry hood on earth and is an essential part of the atf fire research laboratory. the hood needs to be this large in order to monitor and measure the heat output created by burning buildings underneath it. full scale houses have been specifically built, placed under the hood and destroyed in the name of research on a regular basis since the state-of-the-art facility was opened in 2003, and that’s just one of the 3 hoods in a lab which is so impressive that it’s visited by experts the world over.

official site is here.

the photo above shows ligo’s hanford observatory, one of 2 main facilities used by ligo to detect ‘ripples’ or gravitational waves in space-time. both of the observatories have an enormous l-shaped interferometer, each arm measuring 4km in length, with a mirror at each end. laser light enters the ‘arms’ from the corner of the l-shape and then bounces back and forth between each mirror a set number of times. the reason for this is better explained in the clip below.

for a simple explanation about both gravitational waves and ligo itself, watch the clip. to see the hanford observatory on google maps, click here. the ligo website is here.

the arecibo observatory in puerto rico contains the largest curved focusing dish on earth and is used for 3 main research purposes: radio astronomy, aeronomy and radar astronomy observations of solar system objects. the dish has been set in a depression between some hills and, to compensate for its fixed position, the receiver can be repositioned as it sits 450ft above ground. the observatory’s incredible appearance resulted in a cameo in goldeneye’s final scene.

the official arecibo site can be found here. also, the gigantic structure can be seen clearly on google maps here.