GIANT PENCIL COSTS 3.5 BILLION DOLLARS
28. May, 2009 
2 Comments
What would the Golden Fleece awards think of this giant pencil constructed at the National Ignition Facility – not much I’d guess.
NIF is this nation’s serious attempt to harness fusion technologies and has finally reached the point where it is almost ready to begin conducting experiments.
The idea is to use multiple high-energy lasers to ‘ignite’ a very small amount of hydrogen by squeezing it under the impact – not to mention pumping huge amounts of energy into it simultaneously.
I think its pretty cool – and believe that the experiments are likely to produce useable results – the math is there, its just a question of coordination and timing.
But who cares, really?? I look at that giant pencil and think about everything that it might be writing…
Article and pic from the New York Times
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Charlie