January 22, 2009 – 10:21 pm
One for the mad science brigade, and explorers of abandoned futures. A network of nuclear powered Russian lighthouses in the Arctic Circle.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union decided to build a chain of lighthouses to guide ships finding their way in the dark polar night across uninhabited shores of the Soviet Russian Empire. So it has been done and a series of such lighthouses has been erected. They had to be fully autonomous, because they were situated hundreds and hundreds miles aways from any populated areas. After reviewing different ideas on how to make them work for a years without service and any external power supply, Soviet engineers decided to implement atomic energy to power up those structures.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the unattended automatic lighthouses did it job for some time, but after some time they collapsed too. Mostly as a result of the hunt for the metals like copper and other stuff which were performed by the looters. They didn’t care or maybe even didn’t know the meaning of the “Radioactive Danger” sign and ignored them, breaking in and destroying the equipment. It sounds creepy but they broke into the reactors too causing all the structures to become radioactively polluted.
Amazing what exists out there. Especially in Russia.
LINK (English Russia)
Tweet This Post
December 12, 2008 – 1:34 am
As we all know, laser scalpels are notoriously bad at delicate work, which makes them all but redundant when it comes to brain surgery (because they will quite literally bake your noodle). But thanks to a former scramjet designer from Texas, we now have a super fine femtosecond laser that fits in a crystal fiber (Think super-fine fibre optic cable). According to Adela Ben Yakar:
“The laser turns the targeted cell into atomic dust, but leaves surrounding tissue untouched”
ES are hoping there’s a way to switch this useful safety feature off.
LINK (BTS)
Tweet This Post
November 6, 2008 – 2:58 pm
In my spare time, I have often thought about powering my Marshall stack with a hydrogen bomb, but it seems I’ve been beaten to it by Andrew Murray, a physicist at the University of Manchester, UK., who has found a way to trap atoms using his old amps! Now, while this has obvious applications for stadium rock pyrotechnics shows, it may also help in the development of quantum computers. Previously scientists used a complex system of lasers and force fields (much like an Iron Maiden concert) in order to trap super-cooled atoms so they can be examined – very useful if you’re into your physics, but hard to do, and not terribly accurate. The solution? Use an old amp speaker instead! According to Murray:
“The alternating [magnetic] field can be used to trap atoms as long as we ensure that the laser beams change polarisation along with it,” says Murray. “We can switch the fields off about 300 to 500 times faster [than before].” That’s fast enough to ensure that the atoms have not had time to escape the trap when they are zapped with an electron beam.
Basically producing an instant, accurate atom-trap! Good news for physicists, and if can be adapted to hold punters still, then great news the next time I play a gig and the audience tries to leave!
LINK
Tweet This Post
