Z-Machine at Sandia Labs Aims for More Power

Vexar writes "Memorable for its Back-to-the-Future room of electric arcs in 1998, Sandia Labs' Z-Machine is getting $61.7 Million in new funding. In addition to more physics textbook-worthy photos, the scientists at this lab intend to hit the all-important, fusion-ready 2.0 million degrees C."

Comments

Don't you think that's overkill?

[Dimwit]

I mean, c'mon, seriously, how much power does it really take to run Zork?

Not Infocom related...

[namekuseijin]

i thought it was about their z-machine for text adventure games from the eighties... :)

Oh goody...

[Ann Elk]

A new unit of measure:

Highly synchronized laser-triggered switches allow the stored energy to be discharged simultaneously through the 36 cables, each as big around as a horse and 30 feet long, arranged like spokes of a wheel and insulated by water.

Are we talking Shetland, Clydesdale, or Percheron?

Re:Oh goody...

[RobertB-DC]

A new unit of measure:
"through the 36 cables, each as big around as a horse and 30 feet long"
Are we talking Shetland, Clydesdale, or Percheron?

I have horses on my land, so measuring diameter in terms of horse-circumference actually seems pretty cool. But then, I have Appaloosas... by contrast, a Throughbred is deep in the front but narrow in the back, and would be better suited to measuring conical volume.

Of course, they used more traditional measurements as well:

Power is measured in house-minutes: Strangely, the power used in each trial is only enough to provide electricity to about 100 houses for two minutes.

I think one "spool of thread" is about equivalient to 1.5 milliHorses: Yet particles imploded in the accelerator's tiny targets -- about the size of a spool of thread

And of course, the standard measurement of distance, the LA/NY: -- reach velocities that would fly a plane from Los Angeles to New York in a second.