# Favorite Pictures

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Wonder what the caution tape is for on the floor?
Who is looking at the tape? What the heck kind of speakers are those?

Those mbls sounded incredible. But at 250k, they better right!

Demolition Man?

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Demolition Man?
Sandia Laboratory’s Z pulsed power machine is the world's most powerful and efficient laboratory radiation source. It uses high magnetic fields associated with high electrical currents to produce high temperatures, high pressures, and powerful X-rays for research in high energy density science. The Z machine creates conditions found nowhere else on Earth. Z is part of Sandia's Pulsed Power program, which began in the 1960s.

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Demolition Man?
The Z machine creates conditions found nowhere else on Earth.

Sandia does a lot of nuclear weapons research. The Z Machine is so named because the focus of all this energy is a tiny wire suspended in the vertical ("Z") axis. They dump energy equivalent to six times mankind's total electrical generating capacity into a handful of tungsten wires, each 1/10 the diameter of a human hair, in just a few trillionths of a second. Lightning is orders of magnitude slower, in fact Sandia's pulses have about a million times the wattage of the average lightning stroke.

These generate star-like conditions, much hotter than our own Sun. Sandia has been steadily progressing towards sustainable fusion reactions for years- but Lawrence Livermore's equally incredible lasers are also achieving results. Let's hope one of them viably solves the energy crisis before we destroy ourselves.

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Demolition Man?
The Z machine creates conditions found nowhere else on Earth.

Sandia does a lot of nuclear weapons research. The Z Machine is so named because the focus of all this energy is a tiny wire suspended in the vertical ("Z") axis. They dump energy equivalent to six times mankind's total electrical generating capacity into a handful of tungsten wires, each 1/10 the diameter of a human hair, in just a few trillionths of a second. Lightning is orders of magnitude slower, in fact Sandia's pulses have about a million times the wattage of the average lightning stroke.

These generate star-like conditions, much hotter than our own Sun. Sandia has been steadily progressing towards sustainable fusion reactions for years- but Lawrence Livermore's equally incredible lasers are also achieving results. Let's hope one of them viably solves the energy crisis before we destroy ourselves.

That is some crazy shit fil!

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Sandia's Z machine uses electricity to create radiation and high magnetic pressure, which are both applied to a variety of scientific purposes ranging from weapons research to the pursuit of fusion energy.

The process starts with wall-current electricity, which Z uses to charge large capacitors — structures designed to store an electric charge and release it instantaneously. In every shot the machine consumes only about as much energy as it would take to light 100 homes for a few minutes. Metal cables arranged like the spokes of a wheel connect the capacitors to a central vacuum chamber, 10 feet in diameter and 20-feet high. The cables, some insulated by water and some by oil, are each as big around as a Volkswagen Beetle and 30-feet long.

When the accelerator fires, powerful electrical pulses strike a target at the center of the machine. Each shot from Z carries more than 1,000 times the electricity of a lightning bolt, and is 20,000 times faster. The target is about the size of a spool of thread, and it consists of hundreds of tungsten wires, each thinner than a human hair, enclosed in a small metal container known as a hohlraum (German for hollow space). The hohlraum serves to maintain a uniform temperature.

The flow of energy through the tungsten wires dissolves them into plasma and creates a strong magnetic field that forces the exploded particles inward. The speed at which the particles move is equivalent to traveling from Los Angeles to New York – about 3,000 miles – in slightly less than one second. The particles then collide with one another along the z axis (hence the name Z machine), and the collisions produce intense radiation (2 million joules of X-ray energy) that heats the walls of the hohlraum to approximately 1.8 million degrees Celsius.

Instruments that measure these implosions must be even faster in order to record the details of the process. This is an added challenge for researchers who rely on the accuracy of these measurements to understand Z's results and nuclear events in general. Accurate measurements allow scientists to experiment with a variety of target arrangements to create conditions useful for many different purposes.

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Here ya go Steve, figured I'd hang that one for you.

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An oldie but a goodie.

Judging by her figure, it's a pretty safe bet that she was still single when that picture was taken.

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An oldie but a goodie.
Judging by her figure, it's a pretty safe bet that she was still single when that picture was taken.
She's 72 now, right?

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50,000 tons of ultra-pure water, 13,000 photomultiplier tubes (each 20 inches in diameter)

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Holy cow! A turntable with an air bearing- now I'm impressed!

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LOL....a turntable that has clocks.....now I"M impressed..........what time yah got??

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LOL....a turntable that has clocks.....now I"M impressed..........what time yah got??

Pssst... Perry... Those "clocks" are liquid-filled pressure gages, for the pneumatic system and the air bearing.

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Psst....I know....
Linear tracking tone arms are something I've been studying for a while now.
Air bearings have their pros and cons......I've been working on mechanical arms....non assist.
With great success i may add....

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The four gyroscopes in Gravity Probe B are the most perfect spheres ever made by humans. These ping pong-sized balls of fused quartz and silicon are 1.5 inches across and never vary from a perfect sphere by more than 40 atomic layers. If the gyroscopes weren't so spherical, their spin axes would wobble even without the effects of relativity.
According to calculations, the twisted space-time around Earth should cause the axes of the gyros to drift merely 0.041 arcseconds over a year. An arcsecond is 1/3600th of a degree. To measure this angle reasonably well, GP-B needed a fantastic precision of 0.0005 arcseconds. It's like measuring the thickness of a sheet of paper held edge-on 100 miles away.

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Audio Power Labs Treats Eye and Ear (Axpona 2012)

Although Misty Ellis' atmospherically lit room was a challenge to photograph, the sound this company from Columbus, OH put together from a big-bucks system headed by the Audio Power Labs 833TNT 200W transformer-coupled monoblocks ($175,000/pair), Tidal Audio Contriva Diacera SE floorstanding speakers ($58,190/pair in piano black, $64,190/pair in African Pyramid Mahogany as shown), and Laufer Teknik The Memory Player 64 ($24,600) was as tantalizing and satisfying as its visuals.

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Pivetta Opera One – The World's Ultimate and Most Expensive Amplifier

There are power amps, and there are power amps, and then there’s the Pivetta Opera One. Standing six feet tall and weighing over half a ton, this monster is designed by Pivetta Andrea, built by the Italian company bearing his given name, and distributed worldwide exclusively by HigherFi.

The Opera One provides 12 channels of 1600 watts each into 8Ω, for a total of 19,200W and it can also drive 4Ω loads with even higher or levels for a class AB. Obviously, that requires a serious power supply which must be connected to a 230/400VAC mono.  The amp can be used to drive a surround system with up to 12 speakers with balanced and unbalanced inputs for each channel. Alternatively, it can drive a 2-channel rig in a single-, bi-, tri-, or quad-amped configuration. Pivetta is working on a bridging option to combine channels for more power that could be available in future versions.

Initially priced at $650,000, the Pivetta Opera One is now at sale price of only$490,000 from HigherFi, and can be paid for in installments.

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