incredible (as always). makes the electric motor I am trying to help my daughter build for her science fair look too simple. particle colliding, that is where it’s at!

the science behind these makes me feel stupid. great pics.

The LIGO observatory (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) in Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana are also a sight to see. Each observatory consists of an L shape with each leg of the L being 2.5 miles (4km) long. The legs are 10 foot diameter (approx.) concrete tubes maintained at vacuum. The observatory is best viewed from space: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=46.457778,-119.409722&ie=UTF8&ll=46.457727,-119.409714&spn=0.068233,0.176468&t=h&z=13&iwloc=addr&om=1

Its too bad the Super Monkey Collider lost its funding, or it certainly would have been on this list.

Please, learn some grammar. I stopped reading after the first paragraph. Your use of no capitalization made this impossible to read.

the japanese … they know the way of the samurai … hehe …
the jap facility looks really kewl …

You have great content, but seriously would it hurt that much to use capitalisation?

wow

What about fermilab?

I used to be a homeless rodeo clown but now I am a world class magician !

“the machine unexpectedly produced plasmas with temperatures in excess of 3.6 billion”

Unfortunately, it still managed to leave the center portion of head scientist John Smith’s TV dinner frozen, and the outer parts too crispy. Further research is needed.

I know another facility that should be added. My physics professor at college is part of a team that discovered where cosmic rays come from. The facility has cosmic ray detectors scattered of hundreds of miles in Argentina. Very neat stuff. I can’t really explain the science behind it though.

First time I knew the hadron collider, CERN, was at Junior Hi School and had me confused at that time), why such a large n wide construction has to be built. Clearly now, I have to salute to the project initiators that they have done such a great presentation and write some great proposal to convince some non-believers in the early days when internet-access was an expensive stuff, so we can benefit from that collider these days. Those gadgets, no matter how expensive they are, should be delivered for giving us a better life ..

Looks like something out of half life

They’re really wonderful, like 7 wonders

http://www.juzamdjinn.blogspot.com

What about Ars Electronica?

http://www.aec.at/en/index.asp

“Please, learn some grammar. I stopped reading after the first paragraph. Your use of no capitalization made this impossible to read. posted by disappointed | 4th of January, 2008, 5:44 pm”
I’m sorry, “disappointed” but your second sentence was pretty poor, wasn’t it? Perhaps you might have said, your lack of capitals for proper nouns made this less attractive to read.” That would have the benefit of being in good English and not exaggerating the point.
By the way, when calling the kettle black you might want to sign your pen name with a capital letter.

Hmmm… this is pretty interesting. Your blog often has cool shit.

You missed HAARP: (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program)though See also this video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnRPZOUVhJ4) and this website (http://www.haarp.net/).

But I guess that one’s more unbelievably terrifying then unbelievably cool.

alex

What would be most useful is an attribution and/or link to the sources. These are truly fantastic pictures.

And while I agree that griping about the capitalization is petty, really, people, we demand better of first graders in the slow-learner’s program. Being unable to write a sentence in normally-accepted form is either pretentious or stupid, and detracts from the message.

The LHC will be the end of mankind and Earth. BIG mistake to turn that thing on. Don’t these people watch movies? Don’t they know what can happen?!

huh. disappointed, is what you said actually possible? if a person is not capitalizing, then that would mean there is no capitalizing taking place. therefore if you say “your use of no capitalization” can that be correct since it implies that there was capitalization to begin with at one point? i’m confrused.

disappointed:
Also, from the about page:

“3. the lack of any capital letters throughout the site is deliberate. a quick tip for those wishing to leave shitty comments about the permanent lowercase: it isn’t the grammar you’re trying to crap on, it’s the punctuation.”

ADD some padding for us MAC Firefox users to you blog…it is painful to read! It looks fine via Safari.

This post led me to read a couple hours’ worth of material on particle physics, of which I understood not one noun and few verbs. (I do OK with the articles, mostly.)

I’m a pretty sharp cookie, but I might as well be reading Martian runes when it comes to deep physics. Still, this kind of brain-stretching stuff is what I love about the Internet; thanks for posting.

Thanks for a fine post, “unbelievably cool” photos, descriptions, and - very impressive - your sources.

Two things:

1) I’m puzzled by the “Please, learn some grammar” remark. I’m a recovering English teacher, and didn’t see any problems at a quick read. I’m assuming that your writing style is intentionally informal: and who, in his right mind, would want to post a stiff piece of grammatically impeccable prose that had all the liveliness of …. Sorry. That was going to be a rant.

2) Capitalization is a good idea. If there’s an overwhelming reason why you are using all-lowercase letters, okay: but I’d recommend that you reconsider your no-caps policy.

Background (stop reading here - it gets boring at this point):

e e cummings (poet and Cubist painter) didn’t capitalize his name. At the time, this was a daring thing to do, and Mr. cummings’ reputation as a great creative force wasn’t exactly hurt by his opting for a no-cap signature.

(Hey, poets and Cubist painters are supposed to be eccentric and/or crazy: it helps their credibility.)

Perhaps as a result, using no capital letters has been rather popular in the low end of the creative crowd.

However, using capital letters at the start of sentences and proper nouns helps readers get past these funny marks on the screen, to your ideas.

And I think it’s the ideas that are important here.

Its too bad the Super Monkey Collider lost its funding, or it certainly would have been on this list.

Lots and lots of comment spam.

What narrow minded people you are who witter on about grammar and punctuation in these posts. Are you all so thick and small minded that you don’t realise that it is a modus operandi, a trademark?

P.S to “the die hard” - I missed the part in my English lessons when they hyphenated the words normally and accepted

thanks for this post. you always pump out intriguing information!

while not quite as impressive in scale or visuals, i have to nominate fermilab as the original “extremely cool research facility”, primarily for what it is, when it was built and what has been discovered there. I grew up a few miles away and have been there many times not including all the fishing i’ve done in the ponds on site. i still experience shock and awe every time i go.

ps: sorry for the poor puncuation, at least my grammar is gooder.

Check out the National Ignition Facility “https://lasers.llnl.gov”

192 of the world’s largest lasers firing at a single target to create a fusion reaction and an “ignition” event.

My company was a subcontractor, talk about a place right out of Half Life…

interesting… alien to me

THese are some awesome facilities. I wish my company had even a fraction of these types of buildings

Awesome pictures. Still a bit too stark for me, but very interesting.

@bill : Well, that is what happens when you use things that’s not well supported by today’s people…

That Japanese thing… I’d *swear* I’ve seen it in a *Bad* Dream somewhere….

Блять! что за подстава! всё на импортном %)

Thanks for a great post. And to dissapointed: remember what yer mommy taught you - “never look a gift-horse in the mouth” This article truly was a gift!

z machine and super collider
ownage! scifi stuff

Nice pic’s and important work for our times,Ifound some interesting sites you may be aware of a: the controversial rare earth mine by:MOLYCORP in Mt.home Ca. and b:though it will be underground the forthcoming F.B.I. database in clarksburg W.V. … thanks again V.o.ltd aka voltd. p.s.- pardon the typo.

“Please, learn some grammar. I stopped reading after the first paragraph. Your use of no capitalization made this impossible to read.”

I read it all just fine, maybe its the reader that makes it impossible to read?