this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
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Science Memes

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submitted 8 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee 8 points 8 months ago (4 children)

What's the middle bottom one?

[–] Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 21 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That orb in the middle of the apparatus is The Demon Core, a piece of plutonium produced during the Manhattan Project, for a third nuke which was never needed. So it was used for criticality experiments, which is where those hemispheres come in.

Anyway, in those experiments it was key in a few accidents, which caused the deaths by radiation of several researchers. After the later bout of experiments, the core was scrapped.

A little more reading in case you're interested

[–] Patches@sh.itjust.works 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Idk how you can include all this but not the Kyle Hill documentary

https://youtu.be/aFlromB6SnU

[–] Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago

Good point, thanks for pointing to it.

(Also, pro tip: take off that ?si=... stuff from your link, that's tracking tags)