Located at Sandia National Labs in New Mexico and sounding like the secret weapon of a mad scientist, “Saturn is specifically designed to convert as much electrical power as it can into X-rays, in order to simulate what happens during a nuclear detonation. To do this, the accelerator channels its output pulse through a tiny cylinder made of very thin tungsten wires. As each wire essentially gets hit by its own lightning bolt, it gets turned into a plasma, which is instantly driven inward by the intense electromagnetic field. This implosion releases hundreds of thousands of joules of X-ray energy, which is as close as we can get to seeing what happens when a nuke goes off without actually, you know, setting off a nuke.”
See more glamour shots of the Accelerator in action at Sandia’s Flickr.
Via: dvice
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