The Fusioneers
May 26th, 2016Via: Washington Post:
At first glance, the outbuilding attached to Richard Hull’s Richmond home looks like any lean-to built by a retiree with time on his hands: a slap-dash affair with wood that appears salvaged from home projects gone wrong.
But instead of storing a lawnmower and old paint cans, the shed holds a monstrous metal lathe, wall-to-wall shelves overflowing with items such as television transformers and extraterrestrial-looking rocks, and “High Voltage” signs dangling from the ceiling like chandeliers. And, way in the back: Hull’s fully operational nuclear fusion reactor.
I’m nervously checking out the 69-year-old Hull’s fusor, rubbernecking with 43 others, including a handful of high school students accompanied by game-but-baffled parents. We are gathered for the annual meeting of HEAS, which stands for the High Energy Amateur Science group and meets in this shed every year on the first Saturday of October for a day of, in Hull’s words, “anything that has to do with bangs, pops and sizzles.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eryzp0Pklc8
this is a song about some guy building an atomic bomb on his own, then inviting big wigs for a demonstration.
Mais sitôt qu’ils sont tous entrés
Il les a enfermés
En disant soyez sages
Et, quand la bombe a explosé
De tous ces personnages
Il n’en est rien resté