This is cool if you like looking at pictures of giant machinery and lasers and what-not: Energy of the Future: Igniting a Star With Laser Light

LIVERMORE, California – It may look like one of Michael Bay's Transformers, but this mass of machinery could soon be the birthplace of a baby star right here on Earth.

Using 192 separate lasers and a 400-foot-long series of amplifiers and filters, scientists at Lawrence Livermore's National Ignition Facility (NIF) hope to create a self-sustaining fusion reaction like the ones in the sun or the explosion of a nuclear bomb — only on a much smaller scale.

Sci-fi-inspired End of Days jokes may follow this historic undertaking like they did for CERN's Large Hadron Collider, but the science behind this advanced laser system is profoundly serious.

"Completion of the NIF construction project is a major milestone for the NIF team, for the nation and the world," said Edward Moses, the facility's principal associate director for NIF and photon science. "We are well on our way to achieving what we set out to do — controlled nuclear fusion and energy gain for the first time ever in a laboratory setting."

The hope is that this reaction will release more energy than the lasers put into the target isotopes and perhaps redefine the global energy crisis in the process.

But I discovered a major mistake in their laboratory:

Throughout the entire NIF facility, emergency shutdown panels listing the status of the laser (using both text and light) provide a level of safety for the hapless scientist or technician who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time before a firing of the lasers.

Photo of control panel with big red "Emergency Shutdown" button: [link]

How is a scientists supposed to get trapped inside the reaction chamber and turned into StarMan? What ever happened to the safety feature of running the experiment off a timer that can't be stopped, with a door that closes automatically and can't be opened once the timer starts?

Awesome cephalopod tat: Weird people with strange obsessions

Why is it That... in 2008 were there over 3 million searches on the keywords "Obama Antichrist" and "Obama Messiah"?

Or maybe he's both....bum..bum..bum.

Awesome cephalopod tat

Okay, the sword is overkill. A cephalopod doesn't need a weapon to fuck you up.

OMG, why is a coworker talking to me about her colonoscopy?!?! I wish we were a little bit closer, so I could write back, "TMI."

wow. that is not on.

I need to get going on my work, so far I had a meeting and then just the internets. bad worker.

Note to self: watching The Mist first thing in the morning is not the best thing to do, emotion-wise. Perhaps wait until nighttime to watch the rest of it, when it's not all misty out?

Note to self: watching The Mist first thing in the morning is not the best thing to do, emotion-wise.

Heh.

You'll have to tell us what you thought of the ending, as it's different from the story.

I think I've converted a thread into my own blog. Who needs a blog when you can hijack a thread.

Who's a cute widdle pistol?

Float Like a Hummingbird, Sting Like a Baby's Punch

Back in 1914, an Austrian watchmaker named Georg Grabner marketed an autoloading pistol under that name. It has the distinction of being the smallest auto pistol ever made.

The tiny 3 grain bullet has a muzzle velocity of about 650 feet per second. That means that the gun has about 1/2 the power that my air pistol produces. The projectile is so small that it would certainly penetrate if you shot someone's bare skin, but it also means that I really can't conceive of it doing anything but pissing an attacker off. Unless you managed to shoot his eye out, of course.

Famed firearms expert Ian Hogg had this to say about the Kolibri.

"Grabner decided to make a miniaturised version and promote it as a self defence-gun for ladies, capable of being carried in any handbag or purse. What the lady was to defend herself against is open to some question; the 3-grain bullet produced about two foot-pounds of muzzle energy, which would probably have proved decisive against an enraged cockroach."

Perhaps any attacker would be overcome by the cuteness of the gun....