You may notice the overcast sky at Oak Ridge National Labs. Down the road is the Y-12 Plant, the last full scale nuclear weapons production facility in the U.S. This site was originally chosen because of the high average cloud cover (for spy planes and satellites), and it now houses several DOE projects.
Behind me is the spallation target area, which will house several tons of liquid mercury in a large tank. A large linear accelerator runs off to the right to bring a 1 billion eV proton beam into the mercury to release neutrons into various instruments (e.g., for soft tissue imaging).
This facility will produce 10x as many neutrons as the prior record holder, and it is the first to use a mercury target. Cost: $1.4 billion.
Tags: sns particle accelerator neutron nuclear top-v555 ORNL DOE physics nanotechnology nano technnology nanotech
Does anyone remember that episode of Lost in Space where the people were running around inside a big computer? I can't remember if the people had shrunk or the computer had grown, but it was slowly going back to normal and they had to squeeze their way out...
Never trust a computer you can't walk through.
Cray X1 at ORNL.
Tags: cray x1 lost space tron flynn 500plus ORNL nanotechnology nano technnology nanotech
A walk-through TV.... Here you see one half of the 27-panel rear-projector system at ORNL.
When we walk around the back, it casts a segmented shadow on the screen.
This was the subject of Puzzle 9.
Tags: ornl projection immersion nanotechnology nano technnology nanotech