Random PICTURE of the day thread *KEEP IT WORK SAFE*

[Torinoman]

[Strychnine]

The fuck is that

Cyclotron.

Those are magnets above and below him.

In the world of technology, what’s cutting-edge in the morning is often on the scrap-heap by the afternoon. But some machines are so revolutionary, so innovative — so cool — that even years after they’ve been largely outpaced or even replaced by other, more efficient or more powerful devices, they can still amaze.

One such marvel is the cyclotron: a huge, early “atom smasher” that led to, among other things, key breakthroughs in the study of subatomic particles and, in a sense, to the Atomic Age itself. Here, LIFE.com celebrates the remarkable instrument, and the minds that conceived, refined and worked wonders with it when it was still the sharpest of edgy tech.

The way cyclotrons works (and the way they still work, for there are some still in operation) is, at heart, almost rudimentary: particles sped up by the enormous device’s transmitter and magnet form a beam of energy. “When this beam is directed against a metal target,” LIFE explained to its readers in a February 1940 issue, “enough of the particles hit the nuclei in the metal to cause atomic explosions, making them give off neutrons or other radiations. When other substances, in turn, are bombarded with neutrons, new substances are formed, which explode with radioactive violence. These artificially radioactive substances are of great use in biological research” — particularly, the article noted, the battle against cancer.

Cyclotrons were so much a part of the national conversation in the late 1940s, in fact, that in an advertisement in a 1948 issue of LIFE, Shell Oil not only touted its products’ use in Columbia University’s Nevis Lab cyclotron, located 20 miles north of Manhattan in Irvington, New York, but actually took the time (and the valuable ad space) to discuss how the machine worked:

“With the energy of 400 electron volts, the cyclotron whirls its missiles ’round and ’round until they approach half the speed of light — and then flings them at the target…. The missiles — the nuclei of hydrogen atoms — are hurled at a ‘cloud’ of other atoms. Some of these are hit, shattered, by an impact greater than that from any other cyclotron. One purpose: to find among the fragments new forms of matter.”

[The huge Nevis Lab cyclotron, LIFE pointed out, employing an image that would resonate with its readers a short few years after the end of WWII, contained "as much steel as a destroyer." The cost of the machine? Two million dollars.]

Cyclotrons are still in use today, in various capacities, in countries around the world. The largest — featuring a 50-foot-in-diameter, 4,000-ton main magnet — is operated by TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for nuclear and particle physics, in Vancouver.

Yeah, that's a hammer on the end of a chain...

[Pooter]

The fuck is that

The cyclotron
http://life.time.com/culture/the-cyc...y-tech-marvel/

[Strychnine]

[Jester]

i cant imagine where we would be if we spent as much time and money on advancing our civilization as we do on cool ways to kill.

[barronj]

That looks like a great way to get evicted from your apartment.

[Z06killinsbf]

i cant imagine where we would be if we spent as much time and money on advancing our civilization as we do on cool ways to kill.

Ya, but that's how we advance our society. Scientist figure out how to kill people and then how to save them from what they just created.

[SS Junk]

[Silverback]

[SouthernSVT]

^^^ Mario breaks bricks with his fist, not his head. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

[mikec]

Git some!

[71chevellejohn]

[2165 Turbo Rail]

Superstar!
(Crash)

[Jester]

Superstar!
(Crash)

was he on tv or something?

[HarrisonTX]

was he on tv or something?

It does appear that way Jester..