Forget the Large Hadron Collider, Here Comes the Heliotron!


Photo: National Institute for Fusion Science, background-worthy large pic here

Large Hadron Collider who? Forget CERN's little science gizmo - the supersexy science machine title belongs to Japan's Large Helical Device, the world's largest superconducting stellarator* that employs a heliotron magnetic field. Via The Long Now Foundation

Plus, there is a large pic that looks good for your monitor's background! (For some neat photos of the Joint European Torus nuclear fusion reactor and more, check out Kernfusie)

*A thingamajig used to contain hot plasma with magnetic field to sustain a controlled nuclear fusion reaction.


I do understand some science and I've study astronomy.

The Hadron will not make black holes large enough for the earth's end. But I do believe that it will over time, around 50 destroy our little blue planet. Messing with the magnetic field for one and have we not got enough background radiation without that Japanese machine.
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I'd heard that it wasn't the threat of black holes, but some strange and theoretical result of creating strange quarks, which supposedly will tear the very molecules of the world apart.

Just what I'd heard.
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They're building the huge ITER 500 MW tokamak project one hour drive from my home.
I'll try to post something if I see a big bright mushroom the day they switch it on. In 2018.
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Come Wednesday we will either be one step closer to understanding the origins of our planet or one step closer to destroying the planet once and for all. Which will it be? Well, we will all just have to wait and see.

www.thebugz.com
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oh, you silly, silly kids, those are not such things out of a sci-fi movie, they are just harmless expensive research equipment, all they really do is a try to the discovery of information on the mechanics of physics, no big production of anything substancial (like a nuclear reactor).
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let's all kill ourselves now so that the evil scientists can't kill us with their black holes and magnetic disturbances.

as a physics student I'm apalled at how dumb people are. anything to justify slashing the science budget, right? it's all a witch hunt.

now, if a Magnetar blows up anywhere nearby, the atmosphere would boil away and we would be instantly killed by gamma radiation. but scientists aren't in the business of fabricating death stars. if you want to fear something, fear the infinite void above us.
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