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5 unbelievably cool research facilities

otherwordly structures, massive machines, surreal technology….

some incredible beasts have been constructed in the name of research and below are 5 of the most immediately intriguing. there are plenty more out there which will be highlighted in the near future as i’m making this a series of sorts. let me know if you have any in mind for the next collection.

an old favourite on the intertubes, this 50′000 ton cylindrical ‘ring-imaging water cerenkov detector’ can be found at the kamioka mozumi mine in japan - 1′000m underground. clever people built the machine to detect neutrinos, proton decay and cosmic rays: this is done using the 12′000-ish photomultiplier tubes (extremely sensitive light detectors) visible on all walls of the ‘ultra-purified water-filled’ tank. to offer further explanation would reveal my scientific ineptitude. instead, go here for a nicely simplified explanation and here for some incredible hi-res photos large enough to incapacitate the average pc.

first of all (in case you don’t know) an anechoic chamber is a room which has been filled with sound absorbing materials in order to minimise all reflections from internal surfaces, thus making the space echo-less. more commonly these rooms are used to test and research sound equipment due to the lack of any such interference affecting the equipment’s output. the benefield anechoic facility you see above is the largest anechoic chamber on earth and, rather than using acoustically absorbent materials, is filled with radiation absorbent materials in the form of 816′000 foam cones designed to minimise the reflection of radio frequency signals. to read more, look here.

the z machine is the largest x-ray generator on earth and is believed by many as the key to understanding controlled fusion.

‘the z machine uses a short burst of intense electricity - only a few 10 billionths of a second long - that forces an ionized gas to implode. the process is called a z-pinch because the pulse creates a magnetic field that squeezes particles in the vertical direction, which math books usually label as the “z-axis.” at the center of the z-pinch, in the space of a small soup can, gas particles race at each other at a million miles an hour. the collisions result in X-rays and extremely high temperatures.’

in 2006 the machine unexpectedly produced plasmas with temperatures in excess of 3.6 billion °f. that’s hotter than the core of our sun.

a very brief video tour…

arranged on an enormous y-shaped set of tracks on the plains of san augustin is the ‘very large array’, a collection of 27 radio antennas used primarily by astronomers around the world. each antenna weighs 230 tons and can be moved by way of the 3 13 mile long tracks, giving a total of 4 different configurations, the data from all 27 antenna can then be combined to give the resolution of an antenna whopping 22 miles across. the 2nd picture, from google maps, gives you some idea of the scale of the observatory.

the direct link to the vla on google maps is here. the vla website is here.

the large hadron collider, when completed very soon, will be the largest particle collider on earth, one of the intentions being to recreate the slightly hot conditions that occured immediately after the big bang, in turn resulting in the observation of the ‘god particle‘. the huge circle in the 1st photo is the location of the lhc tunnel, located approximately 100m below ground and measuring 27km in circumference. in the tunnel are 2 parallel tubes, each carrying protons in opposite directions at near the speed of light using the surrounding superconducting magnets. to carry on with this explanation could take days and a lot of mistakes so you should continue reading about this mammoth machine here.