Forget the Large Hadron Collider, Here Comes the Heliotron!

By Alex in Pictures, Science & Tech on Sep 4, 2008 at 1:41 am

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.

Neat stuff from the NeatoShop:

The Foreigner
Sep 4th, 2008 at 2:03 am
Are you sure it wasn’t Doc Ock who built that thing?
sw
Sep 4th, 2008 at 10:56 am
is this one going to swallow us in a black hole too? i can’t follow the science, so I follow the sensationalism.
Nicholas Dollak
Sep 4th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Whee! You must be at least this infinitessimally small to ride this ride…
Martha
Sep 4th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
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.
Thomas
Sep 4th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
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.
Christophe
Sep 5th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
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.
Elspeth
Sep 8th, 2008 at 6:18 am
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.

http://www.thebugz.com
mrhouston
Jan 20th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
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).
chris
Feb 2nd, 2009 at 11:54 pm
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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