kenthorvath writes "This guy and his friend built their own cyclotron, capable of 1 MeV protons using spare parts and surplus science equipment. Anyone else happen to have a 4600 lb. magnet lying around?"
So now we know what's at the galactic center...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Funny
An alien experiment that went seriously south and created a massive black hole.
Remember, kids, don't try this at home!
If it doesn't work out...
by
MacOS_Rules
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· Score: 5, Funny
This is what seems to be a very cool application of putting old equipment to good work. And hey, if it turns out that it doesn't work, he has a cheep and effective form of birth control...
*shudders* Me thinks of the advertisments for DIY permenant birth control... =O
-- If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business.
-Thackeray, William
Re:If it doesn't work out...
by
LordDartan
·
· Score: 5, Funny
So, are you saying being around a 4600lb magnet is birth control, or being a big enough geek to have a 4600lb magnet is the birth control??
Anyone else happen to have a 4600 lb. magnet lying around?
Yes, I keep it right here, next to my server backup tapes.
-- "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Yesterday's technology, tomorrow!
by
shadowj
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Looks like they've managed to duplicate one of the first cyclotrons. Question is, what are they going to do with it?
--
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
Re:Yesterday's technology, tomorrow!
by
bastion_xx
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Cyclotrons can be used for uranium enrichment. Most of the uranium used in the Hiroshima (40*WTC911) and Nagaski (20*WTC911) bombs was purified in cyclotrons.
Actually, they both weren't U135 based.
The Hiroshima weapon, Little-Boy, was a uranium enriched "gun" style weapon. Material from Oakville, TN. Fat-man, the weapon used on Nagasaki, was an implosion based Plutonium; material courtesy of Hanford, WA.
It takes a lot of energy, so you might want to have vast oil reserves that you aren't allowed to export in order to power the cylcotrons.
Aye, that it does. And the results of the processing facilities are the same too. In Oakville and Savannah, there are buildings no one will enter for a long, long, time. In Hanford, the engineers are finding out very interesting things about the waste storage tanks.
Actually several points in your note are incorrect. First the name of the place of Oak Ridge TN. Also known as Clinton Engineering Works, part of the Manhattan Project.
Several methods were used to seperate U-235/238 at teh Oak Ridge facilities, of which one was a cyclotron-based production train.
As to the long term effects of cyclotrons on the buildings, in the mid '80s my office was to be on the magnet floor of one of the cyclotron buildings. The building had already been reused at least twice before that. (The Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion project was in there during the 1950's, and during the 1960's the clear bay in the middle of the building was used for part of the drop tests of nuclear fual transport vessels.)
There are buildings in the Oak Ridge DOE reservation that I wouldn't want to spend much time in, but the stories that they were rendered unusable are just that, stories without facts.
John Farmer (Contractor at all the OR sites from 1979 - present, Mother & father at OR sites from 1943 to 1990)
Re:Yesterday's technology, tomorrow!
by
AJWM
·
· Score: 5, Informative
This should not have been modded up as insightful, but rather modded down as disinformative.
Where to begin?
Yes, the Hiroshima bomb ("Little Boy") was of the enriched-uranium type, but the uranium was enriched in gas centrifuges, not cyclotrons. (As uranium hexafluoride gas, with the U235 hexafluoride being somewhat lighter than U238 hexafluoride).
The Nagasaki bomb ("Fat Man") was of the plutonium implosion type, no uranium involved. It was originally targeted for the arsenal at Kokura, but the weather forced diversion to the backup target (Nagasaki).
The actual yield of the Nagasaki bomb was about 33% greater than Hiroshima (21kt vs 15-16kt), not "not that much smaller".
The only thing a cyclotron has in common with a gas centrifuge is that stuff goes around in circles in both.
-- -- Alastair
Re:Yesterday's technology, tomorrow!
by
packeteer
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
One of the other little known facts of about Nagasaki was that it was essentially an experiment. It was chosen as a secondary site because they wanted to know what kind of damage would be done to a hilly area. As it turns out the hills protected the people on the other side. Im not saying this is some giant conspiracy or thats its even (any more than Hiroshima) evil im just saying they got a lot of data from Nagasaki. Kinda sad to think civilian casualties are reduced to data but it was a war and hopefully we learned from it.
It never ceases to amaze me that amateur science enthusiasts are building stuff like that - from the home-made tesla coil of a few weeks ago, to home-built rockets capable of low orbit... it just blows me away. Granted, the devices they build are generally years, if not decades behind the "cutting edge", but the fact that average people can take a sound scientific principle and turn it into something physical for a handful of bills is wonderful. It is people like these that foster innovation and growth in the sciences - not multi-billion dollar research conglomerates. These DIY tinkerers are what science is all about - it is science for the sake of science, and by extension, for the sake of the world! They do it because they are passionate about what they are doing - not for the fame, or the fortune. It was politics and economics that made the decision to put a man on the moon - it is people like this that got us there.
"...but the fact that average people can take a sound scientific principle and turn it into something physical for a handful of bills is wonderful"
Erm... the average person can't work a VCR let alone build a cyclotron... hell they probalby think a cyclotron is one of those exercise bikes from the shopping channel.
It never ceases to amaze me that amateur science enthusiasts are building stuff like that...
According to Tim's web page: "I am currently a graduate student in the Physics Department at Rutgers University. My primary area of interest is in Particle accelerators. I have worked at Fermilab in the Beams Division." Then it goes on to list accelerator talks he's given, accelerators he's worked at, and publications on accelerators he's written.
So how exactly does that make him an "amateur science enthusiast?"
Re:Terrorism
by
packeteer
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Oh god this has been argued before. In the 1970's in the supreme court case The Progressive vs. The United States cencorship of nuclear info was tested. The Progressive wanted to publish a layman's description of an H-Bomb in order to show that it was not some "secret" and that keeping it as a "secret" would not work or help anything. The govt. took them to courst and the supreme court decided to cencor them. Its sad but true that these things happen but the supreme court setup some rules about when its ok to publish info and this is something that clearly is not dangerous.
Ray: "You know, it just occured to me that we really haven't had a successful test of this equipment." Egon: "I blame myself." Peter: "So do I." Ray: "Well, no sense in worrying about it now." Peter: "Why worry? Each one of us is carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back."
-- --"You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think."
We better not let terrorists get ahold of the protons; after all all nuclear weapons are made of them!
Fun with anti-matter?
by
Crasoum
·
· Score: 5, Funny
It deffinatly would be interesting.....
Then again I know I wouldn't want -any- of my friends that are even remotely intelligent (and even less those that are not intelligent) to be messing with particle acceleration...
"Mom.... You did say you wanted a skylight didn't you?"
Of course, an "electron cannon" at atmospheric pressure would be about as dangerous as a broken CRT.
-- Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Things that go boom
by
shadowj
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Keeping a lid on devices that use simple physical principles is a waste of time. If they're that simple, someone will figure it out on their own in due course.
Take H-bombs, for instance. Yes, it's true that details of their construction are secret... but it's pretty well known that you need a fission explosion to set one off. Fission bombs are impressive devices on their own... if you can build one, you really don't need to go much further for most purposes.
The construction details for fission bombs are well known... they're really very simple devices. That doesn't mean that they're easy to build, fortunately.
--
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
Re:Things that go boom
by
shadowj
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Fission bombs are fairly easy to build. Getting the materials is the only real problem, since Wal Mart doesn't sell weapons-grade plutonium.
You can make 'em out of U-235, too, which is a little easier to come by.
It's still not all that easy to build one. Assuming that you manage to machine and assemble the fissionable mass without killing yourself, there's the little matter of making the conventional explosives that work as a trigger do their thing in the right way, at the right time. If you're building a bomb that uses explosives to crush a hollow sphere of fissionable material, for instance, you have to make sure that all the charges fire at exactly the right time, or it'll fizzle.
--
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
Re:Things that go boom
by
cybermace5
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· Score: 4, Informative
I think the rest of it involves putting a neutron source at the interface of the two pieces. I remember something about a phosphorous isotope, but don't quote me on that.
Nuclear weapons that operate on this principle usually have a sphere with a large hole bored in one side, and a plug of U-235 with the particle source on the tip. The plug is fired into the hole (adding up to the critical mass), the source emits particles at the center of the sphere, and no one is around to observe what happens next.
All you need, in addition to the material and firing mechanism, is a concentrating layer around the core. Beryllium is ideal (Hollywood got that one right in The Shadow) but even water will work. If beryllium is used, the end of the plug will have a piece of beryllium on it, so that when the plug is fired, the warhead is completely enclosed in the concentrating layer with the source activated at the center. There has been speculation that a nuclear bomb could be assembled in a filled bathtub or toilet, making the size of the weapon much easier to hide and smuggle.
The people most worried about the possibility of homebrew nuclear weapons are those closest to the development of these weapons. That is the scary part.
-- ...
Re:Things that go boom
by
AJWM
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Ah, but the real trick is in clicking those subcritical masses together quickly enough, and holding them together long enough, for the whole thing to go "KABOOM!" rather than just fizzle into a scattered mess of melted and shattered chunks of fissionable material that has just showered you and some of the neighbors with a very lethal dose of gamma and neutrons.
Recall that some nuclear workers have seen the pretty blue flash from nuclear material accidentally going critical and lived long enough to tell the cleanup crew about it.
Same principle as burning gunpowder in a little pile (makes a nice ball of flame) vs confined as in a firecracker (makes a nice if not Earth-shattering kaboom).
-- -- Alastair
Hemispheric safety.
by
Trusty+Penfold
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· Score: 5, Funny
These amateur experiments are very impressive but I'm always worried that the lack of safety guidance will lead imitators into trouble. For example, with this equipment there are potential safety issues if the experiment is replicated in the southern hemisphere.
In the southern hemisphere or, more specifically, south of the topic of Capricorn, the particles will need to spin the other way. This can be achieved in many ways; none of which were mentioned in the original article. For example; 1) Turn the equipment upside down. 2) Use magnets of opposite polarity. 3) Use anti-protons instead of protons,
Just one of these needs to be done to transofrm a southern cyclotron from a deathtrap into a fun and safe piece of equipment.
Re:Hemispheric safety.
by
Tablizer
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· Score: 4, Funny
In the southern hemisphere or, more specifically, south of the topic of Capricorn, the particles will need to spin the other way.
Solution: purchase a toilet from Australia, and stand in it while flushing it. The water will spiral down in a reverse direction from what it does in the northern hemisphere, protecting you from hemispheric polarity issues while operating your experiments.
Make sure all your neighbors see you stand in the Australian toilet to set a good safety example. Remember, not standing in the toilet is like riding a motorcycle without your foil helmet (which we discussed last time).
(moderators: please don't "nuke" me too badly on this one)
-- Get off my launchpad!
Re:He is right, you know?
by
shadowj
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Allow me.
Here's a link to the full text of the president's address to the UN. He mentions those tubes. Close enough?
And here's a link to a story from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who are anything but crackpots, explaining why those tubes are no kind of evidence at all.
--
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
Now that's a real friend..someone who helps you build your own cyclotron.
Reminds me of a good story . . .
by
arnie_apesacrappin
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· Score: 5, Funny
Anyone else happen to have a 4600 lb. magnet lying around?
When I was in school, one of my professors (the guy who's work is talked about in this/. article) told me this story about a large magnet. Keep in mind, I'm recalling this from memory, and I was in college when it was told to me. Therefore, it is an approximation of the actual events that took place.
A large cylindrical magnet was being delivered to a second floor lab. By large I mean 5 feet in diameter and 3.5 feet wide. Because of university policy, the university maintence crew was to move the magnet to its final destination. After getting it onto the service elevator, they arrived on the second floor.
From the service elevator, the magnet had to move almost the length of the building, turn a corner, and go about another twenty feet to the lab. The three men moving the magnet got it out of the elevator, and started down the hall.
Being a large heavy object, they had to push really hard to get it moving. They kept pushing really hard all the way down the hall. Not being physicists, they assumed that the magnet would stop rolling when they stoped pushing. They were quite wrong. Not only did the magnet not stop when they stopped pushing, but it didn't stop when it hit the wall of the corner room. The exterior wall of the building didn't stop it either. It came to rest embeded deep in the ground outside the lab.
It was much funnier when he told it.
--
Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that. -CP
funny cyclotron joke
by
rudiger
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· Score: 5, Funny
stop me if you have heard this one.
two atoms are flying around in a cyclotron and one says to the other, "i think i lost an electron", to which the other replied, "are you sure?".
the first atom responded "yes, i'm positve."
AHAHAHAHA GEEK HUMOUR IS FUNNY:)
My high school had a "cyclotron kit"
by
Animats
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Many years ago, my high school had acquired the beginnings of a cyclotron as military surplus - the magnet frame and some big spools of magnet wire.
Nobody ever did anything with it, though.
This was part of a large shipment of somewhat random military surplus obtained by the electronics shop instructor under some DoD educational program. Lots of interesting stuff, but very little useful - wierd CRTs from obsolete radars, waveguide, big power tubes, paper tape Morse code training devices, and similar obscure junk.
A great Scientific American home experiment
by
Shadok8
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· Score: 4, Informative
I have an old 1950's Scientific American book of experiments. It features reprints of articles from the magazine.
They have a lengthy article on how to build a 1 MEV particle accelerator. It generates a "spray" of alpha products if I remember correctly. Since this is from the 1950's I just love how in light of recent discoveries, the author recommends leaving the room if you plan to operate it for more than a couple of hours.
Similar warnings are given that a home made X-ray machine may have some risks.
Articles also include: Build a steel rocket with launch girder assembly that reaches a 1 mile altitude. They recommend having a desert for launching. Build a telescope, hand grinding the mirrors. Build the 1MEV Van de Graff generator to power the accelerator.
large magnets, eh?
by
Jonny+290
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· Score: 4, Funny
Anyone else happen to have a 4600 lb. magnet lying around?"
Yup. It's currently keeping my kid's lifesize crayon rendition of the Sistine Chapel stuck to my 46 foot tall, 1400 ton refrigerator.
-- Hey Taco! Looks like you're using the "infinite monkeys and typewriters" scheme to generate Ask Slashdots again...
Building your own accelerator
by
panurge
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· Score: 4, Funny
Years ago Scientific American (dead tree edition ) published a series of articles on how to build a backyard atom smasher of the Cockcroft and Walton variety using a Van der Graaf accelerator. As I remember, it reached about 3 MeV, three times better than this cyclotron, and was a practical home build for someone without the Rutgers back lot to call on. There was a whole lot of stuff in the article about lead lined aprons, though given the usual cliches about backyard inventors and the opposite sex, I'm surprised this was considered necessary.
There seem to be two schools of backyard engineering thought: High voltage (lots of polished metal spheres and weird looking insulation, with blue sparks) and high current (big evil looking coils with water cooling circuits.) Perhaps the two camps could collaborate to build a really big mass spectrograph, which (given enough cheap electricity) you can use to extract your own enriched uranium. I'm sure Charlton Heston could be persuaded to argue that the right to bear arms extends to home tactical nukes.
-- Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Re:bubble chamber
by
meringuoid
·
· Score: 4, Informative
if this is impossible and I must have seen something else, tell me, I could be wrong.
It's impossible. You must have seen something else. I tell you, you're wrong.
It couldn't possibly have been neutrinos - the setups to detect those are huge things, vast underground caverns full of bleach or water. The vapour would detect much heavier particles... Was there a radioactive source nearby?
-- Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Slashdot Mirror
An alien experiment that went seriously south and created a massive black hole.
Remember, kids, don't try this at home!
This is what seems to be a very cool application of putting old equipment to good work. And hey, if it turns out that it doesn't work, he has a cheep and effective form of birth control...
*shudders* Me thinks of the advertisments for DIY permenant birth control... =O
If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business. -Thackeray, William
Anyone else happen to have a 4600 lb. magnet lying around?
Yes, I keep it right here, next to my server backup tapes.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Looks like they've managed to duplicate one of the first cyclotrons. Question is, what are they going to do with it?
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
Now I can really get Spiderman by trapping him in another dimension! Mwhwhahahahha.
It never ceases to amaze me that amateur science enthusiasts are building stuff like that - from the home-made tesla coil of a few weeks ago, to home-built rockets capable of low orbit... it just blows me away. Granted, the devices they build are generally years, if not decades behind the "cutting edge", but the fact that average people can take a sound scientific principle and turn it into something physical for a handful of bills is wonderful. It is people like these that foster innovation and growth in the sciences - not multi-billion dollar research conglomerates. These DIY tinkerers are what science is all about - it is science for the sake of science, and by extension, for the sake of the world! They do it because they are passionate about what they are doing - not for the fame, or the fortune. It was politics and economics that made the decision to put a man on the moon - it is people like this that got us there.
Oh god this has been argued before. In the 1970's in the supreme court case The Progressive vs. The United States cencorship of nuclear info was tested. The Progressive wanted to publish a layman's description of an H-Bomb in order to show that it was not some "secret" and that keeping it as a "secret" would not work or help anything. The govt. took them to courst and the supreme court decided to cencor them. Its sad but true that these things happen but the supreme court setup some rules about when its ok to publish info and this is something that clearly is not dangerous.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Question is, what are they going to do with it? :P
Same thing any good physicist does -- try to take over the world!
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
Ray: "You know, it just occured to me that we really haven't had a successful test of this equipment."
Egon: "I blame myself."
Peter: "So do I."
Ray: "Well, no sense in worrying about it now."
Peter: "Why worry? Each one of us is carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back."
--"You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think."
We better not let terrorists get ahold of the protons; after all all nuclear weapons are made of them!
Then again I know I wouldn't want -any- of my friends that are even remotely intelligent (and even less those that are not intelligent) to be messing with particle acceleration...
"Mom.... You did say you wanted a skylight didn't you?"
Of course, an "electron cannon" at atmospheric pressure would be about as dangerous as a broken CRT.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Take H-bombs, for instance. Yes, it's true that details of their construction are secret... but it's pretty well known that you need a fission explosion to set one off. Fission bombs are impressive devices on their own... if you can build one, you really don't need to go much further for most purposes.
The construction details for fission bombs are well known... they're really very simple devices. That doesn't mean that they're easy to build, fortunately.
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
These amateur experiments are very impressive but I'm always worried that the lack of safety guidance will lead imitators into trouble. For example, with this equipment there are potential safety issues if the experiment is replicated in the southern hemisphere.
In the southern hemisphere or, more specifically, south of the topic of Capricorn, the particles will need to spin the other way.
This can be achieved in many ways; none of which were mentioned in the original article.
For example;
1) Turn the equipment upside down.
2) Use magnets of opposite polarity.
3) Use anti-protons instead of protons,
Just one of these needs to be done to transofrm a southern cyclotron from a deathtrap into a fun and safe piece of equipment.
Ban aluminum?
Curses, "foiled" again!
For a couple of seconds I thought this story read "Science: Build Your Own Cyclon" and I got really excited...
I wear pants.
"Question is, what are they going to do with it?"
PROFIT!
But they don't work without neutrons. It's the goddamn neutral particles' fault. (And besides, like, what have the Swiss done for us lately anyways?)
I am in high school and very interested in physics and it would be an awsome project to work on something like this.
Where have I heard this type of thing before?
You may think this is the ultimate chick "magnet," but personally, I think that even if fusion reactors only get a second place in the science fair these days, you should try to build a Tokomak. There's just something sexy about how they look.
After the fair, no matter how you do, you can take a promising date to see it, dim the lights and crank it up and see if sub-nuclear particles are all that get excited. Who knows, maybe you'll finally discover the joys of practical applications for combinatorial physics, where books have only given you theories to feed your fantasies...
(moderators: please don't "nuke" me too badly on this one)
Get off my launchpad!
Here's a link to the full text of the president's address to the UN. He mentions those tubes. Close enough?
And here's a link to a story from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who are anything but crackpots, explaining why those tubes are no kind of evidence at all.
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
Now that's a real friend..someone who helps you build your own cyclotron.
When I was in school, one of my professors (the guy who's work is talked about in this /. article) told me this story about a large magnet. Keep in mind, I'm recalling this from memory, and I was in college when it was told to me. Therefore, it is an approximation of the actual events that took place.
A large cylindrical magnet was being delivered to a second floor lab. By large I mean 5 feet in diameter and 3.5 feet wide. Because of university policy, the university maintence crew was to move the magnet to its final destination. After getting it onto the service elevator, they arrived on the second floor.
From the service elevator, the magnet had to move almost the length of the building, turn a corner, and go about another twenty feet to the lab. The three men moving the magnet got it out of the elevator, and started down the hall.
Being a large heavy object, they had to push really hard to get it moving. They kept pushing really hard all the way down the hall. Not being physicists, they assumed that the magnet would stop rolling when they stoped pushing. They were quite wrong. Not only did the magnet not stop when they stopped pushing, but it didn't stop when it hit the wall of the corner room. The exterior wall of the building didn't stop it either. It came to rest embeded deep in the ground outside the lab.
It was much funnier when he told it.
Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that. -CP
stop me if you have heard this one.
:)
two atoms are flying around in a cyclotron and one says to the other, "i think i lost an electron", to which the other replied, "are you sure?".
the first atom responded "yes, i'm positve."
AHAHAHAHA GEEK HUMOUR IS FUNNY
Many years ago, my high school had acquired the beginnings of a cyclotron as military surplus - the magnet frame and some big spools of magnet wire. Nobody ever did anything with it, though. This was part of a large shipment of somewhat random military surplus obtained by the electronics shop instructor under some DoD educational program. Lots of interesting stuff, but very little useful - wierd CRTs from obsolete radars, waveguide, big power tubes, paper tape Morse code training devices, and similar obscure junk.
I have an old 1950's Scientific American book of experiments. It features reprints of articles from the magazine.
They have a lengthy article on how to build a 1 MEV particle accelerator. It generates a "spray" of alpha products if I remember correctly. Since this is from the 1950's I just love how in light of recent discoveries, the author recommends leaving the room if you plan to operate it for more than a couple of hours.
Similar warnings are given that a home made X-ray machine may have some risks.
Articles also include:
Build a steel rocket with launch girder assembly that reaches a 1 mile altitude. They recommend having a desert for launching.
Build a telescope, hand grinding the mirrors.
Build the 1MEV Van de Graff generator to power the accelerator.
Anyone else happen to have a 4600 lb. magnet lying around?"
Yup. It's currently keeping my kid's lifesize crayon rendition of the Sistine Chapel stuck to my 46 foot tall, 1400 ton refrigerator.
Hey Taco! Looks like you're using the "infinite monkeys and typewriters" scheme to generate Ask Slashdots again...
There seem to be two schools of backyard engineering thought: High voltage (lots of polished metal spheres and weird looking insulation, with blue sparks) and high current (big evil looking coils with water cooling circuits.) Perhaps the two camps could collaborate to build a really big mass spectrograph, which (given enough cheap electricity) you can use to extract your own enriched uranium. I'm sure Charlton Heston could be persuaded to argue that the right to bear arms extends to home tactical nukes.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
if this is impossible and I must have seen something else, tell me, I could be wrong.
It's impossible. You must have seen something else. I tell you, you're wrong.
It couldn't possibly have been neutrinos - the setups to detect those are huge things, vast underground caverns full of bleach or water. The vapour would detect much heavier particles... Was there a radioactive source nearby?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.