Scientific Artifacts from the Sky

I was looking at Google maps at a location near Chicago, so I scooted over to take a look at Fermilab (map). As always, I was struck first by the sheer beauty of the arrangement, and next by how wonderful it is that we human beings would undertake such a massive project just to better understand the laws of nature. And finally, of course, by the irony that it takes something this big to examine particles on very small scales. Blame the wave nature of matter for that: to look at short distances, you need high energies, and that means a whomping big accelerator.

This moved me to take a look at other giant scientific facilities. Unfortunately CERN puts its accelerators underground, so the Large Hadron Collider doesn’t mark the landscape with enormous circles. Here’s SLAC (map), the largest linear accelerator in the world and claimed to be the world’s straightest object.

Astronomy — investigating the very big, rather than the very small — is the other specialty that makes good use of giant facilities. Here’s the collection of telescopes at the Mauna Kea Observatory (map).

Radio astronomers go even bigger. Here’s the Very Large Array (map). (Check out Arecibo if you prefer single-dish telescopes.)

Radio waves used to be an exotic way to look at the sky, but now we have gravitational waves. Here’s the LIGO facility in Hanford, Washington (map).

But it isn’t just particle physicists and astronomers who build landscape-altering facilities. Here’s the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Lab (map). It creates X-rays for use in materials science, biology, chemistry, and who knows what else.

These images are not all to the same scale; in particular, I had to zoom out for LIGO and the VLA, and zoomed in on Mauna Kea. But everything here is pretty big. It takes a substantial effort to figure out the universe.

Any other good suggestions?

32 Comments

32 thoughts on “Scientific Artifacts from the Sky”

  1. Of course the Tevatron is also underground. What you see is the berm that Robert Wilson had built over it to make it visible.

  2. I’m glad you commented on “how wonderful it is that we human beings would undertake such a massive project to better understand the laws of nature.” It reminded me of the exchange between Senator Pastore and Robert Wilson (cf. Edwin Goldwasser. 1979. Vignettes of Fermilab History: Remarks Made at the Robert R. Wilson Celebration. Fermilab Archives).

    Dr. Wilson’s response is even more apt now. Stirringly beautiful. Scientific artifacts from the sky made possible by being curious about the workings of the cosmos.

    Senator Pastore: “Is there anything connected with the hopes of this accelerator that in any way involves the security of the country?”

    Dr. Wilson: “No sir; I do not believe so.”

    Senator Pastore: “Nothing at all?”

    Dr. Wilson: “Nothing at all.”

    Senator Pastore: “It has no value in that respect?”

    Dr. Wilson: “It only has to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with those things. It has to do with, are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things that we really venerate and honor in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending.”

    Cheers.

  3. Search for “Cerro Paranal, Chile,” and Google Maps takes you virtually (hehe) right over the VLT.

    View Larger Map

    I’m trying to search for the world’s highest optical telescope, the Indian Astronomical Observatory, in Hanle, India, but the resolution of the pictures around the coordinates provided for the site seems inadequate to search for a tiny building in the Himalayan range.

  4. Love the sexy science imagery but let us try to remain sober and not forget the not so sexy artifacts that are now superfund sites. For example, the uranium tailings dump on the Colorado River in Moab, Utah is one we can actually ‘see’:

    http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0207/feature1/zoom3.html

    Estimates are that it will cost $1billion to clean the site up by 2025.

    And here is a satellite image of Chernobyl power plant and the abonded town of Pripyat:

    http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/11281/chernobyl-and-pripyat-satellite-photos/

    Doesn’t show the decaying sarcophagus that needs replacing to the tune of another billion.

    Let us try not to get too self grandiose about our objectives and remain humble in the fact that much of what we do in the name of science, especially physics, has little to do with understanding nature or making our country worthy of defending. just saying. let’s keep it real folks.

  5. How about the Octagon at the Newark Earthworks (Ohio)? It’s a lunar observatory, recording the ~18 year cycle of the lunar sunrise/sunsets, built by the Hopewell culture about 1,800 years ago.

    It’s a bit hard to see the mounds/berms, since a golf course was built over it, but they are still visible (the observatory circle in the southwest is a bit easier to see).

  6. Diamond Light Source near Oxford, UK.
    http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Rutherford+Appleton+Laboratory,+Didcot,+Lloegr,+United+Kingdom&sll=34.147785,-118.144516&sspn=0.964906,1.847763&ie=UTF8&hq=Rutherford+Appleton+Laboratory&hnear=Rutherford+Appleton+Laboratory,+Harwell+Science+%26+Innovation+Campus,+Didcot+OX11+0QX,+United+Kingdom&ll=51.574319,-1.310474&spn=0.005661,0.014436&t=h&z=18&lci=org.wikipedia.en

    Arecibo Radio Dish
    http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=arecibo+radio&sll=18.257556,-66.960554&sspn=0.138404,0.23097&ie=UTF8&hq=arecibo+radio&hnear=&ll=18.344393,-66.752479&spn=0.008524,0.014436&t=h&z=18&lci=org.wikipedia.en

    120ft Wind Tunnel at NASA Ames (used to test, among many other things, the parachutes for MER and MSL)
    http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=nasa+ames&sll=18.315418,-66.819878&sspn=0.545606,0.923882&ie=UTF8&hq=nasa+ames&hnear=&radius=15000&ll=37.41654,-122.064189&spn=0.005116,0.007218&t=h&z=19&lci=org.wikipedia.en

    DSN Complexes at
    Goldstone : http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=GDSCC&sll=35.328151,-116.884918&sspn=0.237806,0.461941&ie=UTF8&hq=GDSCC&hnear=&ll=35.41936,-116.890218&spn=0.029692,0.057743&t=h&z=16
    Madrid : http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=mdscc&sll=40.670874,-4.039192&sspn=0.221078,0.461941&ie=UTF8&hq=mdscc&hnear=&ll=40.425928,-4.251409&spn=0.027736,0.057743&t=h&z=16
    Canberra : http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=cdscc+canberra&sll=40.425928,-4.251409&sspn=0.027736,0.057743&ie=UTF8&hq=cdscc&hnear=Canberra+Australian+Capital+Territory,+Australia&ll=-35.400901,148.979437&spn=0.01464,0.028871&t=h&z=17

  7. The J-PARC accelerator in Tokai, Japan (host lab of the T2K neutrino experiment). Note the sandy path going southeast-northwest just north of the main (triangular) ring. This is actually an overpass built to allow Shinto spirits (and worshippers, I suppose) parade from the beach on the right to a shrine on the other side of the lab. Construction of said route was a condition of getting local approval for the construction of the lab.

    http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=j-parc&sll=49.248523,-123.1088&sspn=0.176602,0.472412&ie=UTF8&hq=j-parc&hnear=&radius=15000&ll=36.448213,140.604422&spn=0.006801,0.014763&t=k&z=16

  8. I just love that a major Interstate highway runs over the SLAC (I-280). After all, it is considered to be the “World’s Most Beautiful Freeway;” and has stunning vistas of what no longer exists in CA, open land.

  9. How about the Nevada test range.

    116° 2’10.18″W

    Look at it from an oblique angle so the craters stand out.

  10. As always, I was struck first by the sheer beauty of the arrangement, and next by how wonderful it is that we human beings would undertake such a massive project just to better understand the laws of nature.

    Try protecting Nature.

  11. Another “big” part of LIGO is the 2nd station in Livingston, Louisiana. Together, the pair forms an interferometer with a baseline of 3000 km. Gravitational wave detectors in other countries allow for an Earth-sized network. Moreover, the Earth is moving around the Sun, giving detectors a baseline of 2 AU for long-lasting signals.

  12. I dunno, seems like the larger LIGO facilities should now hold the “world’s straightest object” title(s)?

    Speaking of, does anyone know if LIGO has produced anything? Is it that the data analysis is very complicated, or is it possible that we can’t detect gravity waves as we’ve supposed?

  13. Cody,

    There are no detections yet, but the LIGO collaboration has now demonstrated that they can achieve the incredible sensitivity that they claimed they could achieve. The next step will be to upgrade the detectors to “Advanced LIGO” which will increase the sensitivity by another order of magnitude. If that doesn’t produce clear signals, the gravitational-wave community will be very surprised.

  14. The Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR) looks from above just like a soccer field.
    (42.446706,-76.473465)

  15. I thought to look for some image of the partly completed Superconducting Super Collider near Waxahachie, Texas. The project was cancelled in 1993 with about one-fourth of its storage-ring tunnel dug. I found no images showing this.

    Apparently there was a push, circa 2006, to turn the headquarters building into a data center.

    http://www.superconductorweek.com/pr/0806tgj/scsc1.htm

    Wikipedia says the site is abandoned and run-down as of late 2010.

    John Cramer has a good brief history of the project in his Analog “Alternate View” column.

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