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Switzerland's Mega Tunnel Sets Record

Posted by Soulskill on from the what-a-bore dept.

Anonymous Dupaeur writes "Switzerland, co-home of CERN and numerous other world organizations, has come closer to the completion of their recent megaproject: the Gotthard Base Tunnel, which will be the largest railway tunnel made by man. The project is due to be completed in 2017, and will host 200 to 250 trains a day with a significantly larger kinetic energy than the LHC's beams." After the completion of today's work, the tunnel is now 57 kilometers long, surpassing Japan's 53.9-kilometer Seikan Tunnel. There are a few longer tunnels in existence, such as the 137-kilometer Delaware Aqueduct, but they all move water rather than people.

6 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Largest made by man by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the Gotthard Base Tunnel, which will be the largest railway tunnel made by man.

    Is there a larger, naturally occurring train tunnel somewhere?

  2. Holy irrelevant comparison, Batman! by DriedClexler · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Mentioning CERN because it's hosted in the same country as the tunnel? Comparing an entire train's kinetic energy to that of a fundmantal particle's kinetic energy? WTF?

    Why don't they compare the number of trains going through it per day to the number of possible subatomic particles while they're at it?

    --
    Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
  3. Good for them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't mean to turn this into a slam against America, but I guess what I'm saying is, and so be it. It's a shame that countries around the world are spending billions on engineering such projects while America is spending trillions on war.

    1. Re:Good for them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As opposed to war? All of them.

    2. Re:Good for them by Surt · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, you could tunnel under the SF bay or the peninsula mountain range and relieve the ridiculous housing pressures in SV.
      You could lay FTTH pretty much across the country.
      There are a lot of great ideas out there that would help our country compete better, but instead we invest in farm subsidies because our politics are paralyzed.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    3. Re:Good for them by eln · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What needs to happen is someone in Washington needs to grow a spine and raise taxes to pay for what we need to pay for, and start trimming the fat going forward. The military is a great place to start

      Good luck with that. The military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned about is far bigger and more powerful than even he could have predicted, and it's basically unstoppable at this point. Defense contractors lobby Congress to fund giant defense projects of questionable value, Congress people get those giant defense projects built in their districts, and the jobs that get created turn into votes to get them re-elected and more money for the contractors to expand their lobbying efforts. It's a cycle that's good for everyone involved except the taxpayer (other than the ones in the Congress person's district, of course).

      Hell, the Secretary of Defense himself got raked over the coals for even daring to suggest the military didn't actually need all of the money they get every year, and wouldn't it be great if they could stop buying all this crap they have no use for. If the guy in charge of the military can't cut the military budget, then who the hell can? Congress sure isn't going to do it, nobody ever gets elected by being "soft on defense", especially in our post-9/11 fear-based system.