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Science

The World's Nine Largest Science Projects 89

Posted by samzenpus from the my-science-is-bigger-than-yours dept.
JBG667 writes "Nice overview of the 9 largest science projects currently ongoing. Some of the usual suspects are on the list including CERN, Space Elevator, Space Station, etc. As well as some lesser known including a 3,000-foot-tall 'Solar tower,' the ANTARES underwater neutrino detecting array, and more. Nice read for science buffs."
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The World's Nine Largest Science Projects More

The World's Nine Largest Science Projects

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  • Aaaand soon, when #1 turns bits of Switzerland and France into Europe's newest lake, it'll be the 8 largest science projects.

  • So I guess the Internet is off the list? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by syousef ( 465911 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @09:55PM (#23944567) Journal

    I guess it's now so accepted that people forget it's beginnings as a DARPA experiment. Or perhaps it's just outgrown it's experimental status.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Trogre ( 513942 )

      Nah it's still in Beta.

      • 1) Anyone know if the Canadian Light Source Synchrotron being used for scanning the brain? It better be.
        2) For 14 billion dollars, can't you harness nuclear fusion with an enormous piston? I want some engineering/science buff to chew me out on this one.

        • Chew, chew, chew, chew, chew, chew, chew, spit, spit.

          Fusion has this strange dichotomy in it, low start temperature = more pressure needed, high start temperature = less pressure. So they aim to kickstart a reaction from multi-million degree plasma because it doesn't require an entire sun worth of gravity-induced pressure to shove the atoms together. Only about a third of a sun, which might be obtainable with earth-sized tools.

          Building a giant piston to take the heat of the plasma is beyond current materi

          • I think maybe the grandparent was referring to making a ginormous internal combustion engine, but with fusion bombs providing the explosion to drive the piston rather than actual combustion.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Hojima ( 1228978 )

              That's precisely what I meant. An explosion could give the massive piston a lot of PE when it moves it up. If you surround the explosion with water, it could create a lot of steam pressure.

        • We don't have any materials that we can use to contain a fusion bomb, and also an internal combustion engine would be a very very inefficient way to use that energy, most of which would be heat or radiation as opposed to expanding gasses.

      • Obviously it can't be an experiment if the version number = 2.0.
    • Even if you consider the initial development of the internet as a science project, the project itself was fairly small. Do you consider research into vehicles and transportation to be a big science project just because there are millions of them on the road now?

    • The internet was more of an applied engineering project than a "science experiment."

      It was essentially an application of already existing technologies, just in the same way that I wouldn't necessarily call the development of Linux or hardware (eg. the iPod) "science".

    • It stopped being a "science" experiment when it became commercial, back in 1990 or so. Or else you could say, it became a hobbyist project instead of something driven by scientists...

  • Global warming: planet sized (Score:3, Interesting)

    by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @10:31PM (#23944825)
    and a few astronomical projects that are even bigger than that.

  • WTF! The space elevator? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pallmall1 ( 882819 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @10:50PM (#23944931)
    How can the "space elevator" be listed? It's long on hype and short on actual effort.

    I built a model of the starship Enterprise a long time ago. Building a starship is a pretty big project, so shouldn't it be listed as well?
    • That depends. Enterprise NX-01? Absolutely not. Any other variant? Yeah, sounds like a winner.

    • Sure, as long as you know the correct placement of the giant yellow duck. It's the details that really made the Enterprise work.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by damburger ( 981828 )
      NASA has already run competitions to build elevator climbers. There are millions (perhaps billions) being invested in the development of carbon nanotubes as a viable building material. If such time, energy and money were being spent on building a warp drive, then you might have a point.

      • There are millions (perhaps billions) being invested in the development of carbon nanotubes as a viable building material.
        If those "billions" being invested as part of a space elevator project to develop carbon nanotubes as a viable building material, then YOU might have a point.
        • What makes you think they are not? Most researchers into nanotubes (and there are some in my department) when asked what the applications of their work are will mention space elevators first. There are few other applications that require such ridiculously strong materials - steel suffices for pretty much everything people want to build right now.

          • If we can devise a method to manufacture them cheaply, they'll become very widely used.

            Think about it.... a material that is stronger, lighter, and less voluminous than steel could replace it in any application where weight, space, or amount of material is an issue. Bridges, automobiles, and buildings come to mind very quickly.

      • Not forgetting the cost put towards the war against terrorism! You have to factor that in because there's no point building a tower that big if some terrorist prick is just going to fly another plane into it!

    • Because the hot air created by the project diffuses into the atmosphere, as gases are wont to do, so the project's proportions become planetary.

  • wrong wrong wrong (Score:2, Informative)

    by ILuvRamen ( 1026668 )
    First of all, a couple links are broken and there's major spelling errors. But to get to my real point, it says "one 200MW power station will provide enough electricity to around 200,000 typical Australian households." Oh boy, households being used as a unit of electricity again! Okay, let's do the math. That's 1000 watts per house. Wow, so everyone can have one light bulb on while their small microwave is running and that's it. Most people have 1000 watts in lights on at any given time let alone cook

    • Re:wrong wrong wrong (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @11:21PM (#23945125)

      Okay, let's do the math. That's 1000 watts per house. Wow, so everyone can have one light bulb on while their small microwave is running and that's it. Most people have 1000 watts in lights on at any given time let alone cooking and heating and cooling. What a load of bullshit. I hate sensationalist stats that are horribly, HORRIBLY incorrect.
      No, you're horrible, HORRIBLY incorrect. 1000 watts used constantly is around (24*30=)720 kilowatt-hours per month. This is a very reasonable amount of usage for an average household. Go check the usage on an electricity bill if you don't believe me.

      (For interest's sake, my wife and I together use around 600 kilowatt-hours every month, and thats with a computer running 24/7, AC, and nothing fancy like energy-saving bulbs.)

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by uuxququex ( 1175981 )
        Is 720 kWh really reasonable in your part of the world?

        I'm using 1700 kWh a year and that is about average for my a dutch household. Heating and cooking is gas-based and obviously there is no AC needed here.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by man_ls ( 248470 )

          1700 kWh/year? That's insane.

          I think I probably use 13,000 kWh/year and I consider myself to be relatively conservative compared with many other people whose power consumption I know. F@H/SETI boxes running 24/7, extra servers running their blogs, etc.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Shinobi ( 19308 )

            We're 3 people in this apartment, here in Sweden. No AC, no electrical heating, but electric stove, multiple computers, gaming consoles etc, and we're averaging around 4000kWh/year.

            Low-energy lights, the only computers that are constantly on 24/7 are the Via C3/C7's saving a lot of power etc.

          • Here's the official numbers (Score:5, Informative)

            by uuxququex ( 1175981 ) on Thursday June 26, 2008 @06:00AM (#23946759)
            I found the official numbers of the national budget institute (NIBUD). You can see that the average consumption is quite a bit lower than your expenditure.

            Mechanical translation provided by Google [google.com], just scroll down to "Electricity".

            1 person household: 2220 kWh
            2 person household: 3095 kWh
            3 person household: 3875 kWh

            Average over all households: 3230 kWh

          • I can't imagine using 13,000 kWh per year. I'm in the US (midwest) and we get pretty cold winters and hot, humid summers here. My heat is gas, but A/C is obviously electric. I average about 200 kWh/month, and I don't even remotely try to conserve power other than turning my air off and opening a window whenever I can.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by smallfries ( 601545 )

            No, his numbers are quite reasonable. You Americans have no idea about efficiency and you probably waste more power than the average European household uses in total.

            I share a one-bed (ie 4 rooms, I would guess about 100m^2) flat with my girlfriend. This is a typical sized household for the UK (although the average size is obviously larger). We average 5 kWh per day (so ~1600 kWh per month). We don't live in the dark, the flat is warm over the winter despite the horrific lack of insulation and we are hardl

            • Do you heat your flat with that electricity?

              • No, same as the Dutch example that I was comparing to we use gas. We did live in a horrific flat previously that had economy 7 storage heaters. They doubled our usage to about 3500-4000 kWh a year.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by man_ls ( 248470 )

              My average consumption at my old place was 33 kWh/day, for two people. My new place, seems to be about 17 kWh/day by myself although I haven't had it long enough for the power company to give me a fancy trend report yet. Both places were right around 70 m^2, electric water heater, electric central air (also electric heating but never once used the heater part), electric clothes dryer, electric stove and oven. I think that's part of the problem there, all my major power sinks are electrical.

              I'm going to try

              • Sounds like you've made a big difference already. As you point out heating is likely to be your largest usage at the moment. I know from experience that electric heating sucks. It is very uncommon in the uk (outside of rented student accommodation) because people prefer gas. We found it to be expensive, lack the heat control of gas (takes a long time to heat up or cool down) and it never actually got the flat to a warm level.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by eison ( 56778 )

            I think it mostly depends on whether you have gas appliances or not. When my AC is running I burn up to 1500 kwh a month, but when it's not I max out at 550 (gas heat).

      • No, you're horrible, HORRIBLY incorrect. 1000 watts used constantly is around (24*30=)720 kilowatt-hours per month. This is a very reasonable amount of usage for an average household. Go check the usage on an electricity bill if you don't believe me.

        For interest's sake, my house reliably uses ~350KWh during the winter (gas heat, 2 adults, 2 kids, Austin, TX), seemingly independent of house size (1800 square feet or 2200 square feet). In the summer, we used 1200 KWh in a 1800 square feet house and as muc

    • Re:wrong wrong wrong (Score:5, Funny)

      by zaydana ( 729943 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @11:57PM (#23945361)
      You're forgetting that they're building the plant here in Australia. Electricity was only recently introduced in Australia (think last few years), so many houses don't actually have many electrical appliances, preferring to rely on more proven technologies such as candles, fireplaces and kangaroos.
  • until recently and here they are showing off a spectacular solar power energy plant. I'm very impressed. I thought I would have heard about this on the ABC's Science Show. I haven't been this impressed since the development of the hotrocks [adelaide.edu.au]project in Australia.

    • I didn't know about this being built either, though I do remember seeing a very similar looking proposal to be built near Mildura in the newspaper about 5 years ago.

  • How Many Tenths Of A Trillion Dollars!? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mactard ( 1223412 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @10:59PM (#23944995)
    Better question: how many Libraries of Congress (LoC) would it cost to build a trans-atlantic maglev train. Dumb article.
  • There's an orange that roller under my workbench in the basement a couple of months ago. It is now the 10th biggest science project.

  • They cannot be serious. A computer simulation is one of the 9 biggest experiments? Shoot... Why didn't they list WOW then?

  • From TFA (Score:4, Informative)

    by zaydana ( 729943 ) on Thursday June 26, 2008 @12:01AM (#23945385)
    "With a large mirror, 6.5 meter (21.3 feet) diameter mirror the $5 billion+ [James Webb Space Telescope] will launch folded up inside the space shuttle and then unfold to its full-size - several times that of Hubble." Launching a spacecraft to a 1.5 million km orbit with the space shuttle in 2013. Its good to see the discovery channel has done their research. Honestly, I expected more from these guys...
    • Despite that, I was blown away by how far away that telescope is going to be away. By my calculations, 3x the distance to the moon!

      That at least makes sense. It shouldn't get in your way at all!

  • Another factual error (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ai Olor-Wile ( 997427 ) on Thursday June 26, 2008 @12:03AM (#23945395) Homepage
    The article suggests that the James Webb Space Telescope will be launched from the Space Shuttle, and somehow make it out to 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth. Wikipedia likes to note that an Ariane 5 rocket will be used instead. [wikipedia.org] This is a surprisingly flawed story!

  • Say what? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    >> JBG667 writes Nice overview of the 9 largest science projects currently ongoing.

    In Soviet Russia, nice overview writes JBG667.

  • Take this list with a grain of salt. (Score:5, Informative)

    by AbRASiON ( 589899 ) * on Thursday June 26, 2008 @02:12AM (#23945931) Journal

    Perhaps my googling and wikipedia skills are off the mark but I was looking up large buildings just earlier this week and that solar tower in Australia seems to be on hold / cancelled.

    Last info I could find mentioned the company attempting to do the same thing but in texas now, infact that entire project has been quiet / off the grid for maybe over a year.

    If that's wrong, what else on the list isn't happening?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by khallow ( 566160 )

      The space elevator for sure hasn't been started yet. They don't even have a tether material yet. And at a glance, if your impression of the solar tower is correct, then my take is that we have a considerable number of these projects that aren't going to contribute much with respect to the expense of constructing them. ITER seems another example of the failed "big fusion" approach. If we keep escalating, we might build fusion plants that can generate power, but have them so large that we can't build enough o

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vrmlguy ( 120854 )

        The International Space Station as indicated in the story is going to cost well over $100 billion when it's done. In addition to the huge opportunity costs of spending the money on a single space station (for example, that money could have been spent on several equivalent stations to the ISS), and continuing to run the highly inefficient Space Shuttle to 2010 or beyond, the ISS simply doesn't do that much science, space engineering, or people-living-in-space feelgood.

        OTOH, one Iraq war equals ten space stations!
        Or, enough wind turbines to power North America!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by khallow ( 566160 )
          On the other hand, WHAT? At least, the Iraq war probably has bought some degree of oil supply chain security, that is, furthered a vital US interest. Its cost is to a great extent the result of incompetence and corruption in the Bush administration. One cannot say the same thing for the ISS.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by vrmlguy ( 120854 )

            On the other hand, WHAT? At least, the Iraq war probably has bought some degree of oil supply chain security, that is, furthered a vital US interest. Its cost is to a great extent the result of incompetence and corruption in the Bush administration. One cannot say the same thing for the ISS.

            The ISS wound up costing about ten times initial estimates due to such things as reliance on the Shuttle to deliver parts, and a decision to spread the work over as many Congressional districts as possible.

            On the other hand, enough wind turbines to power North America would also bring about oil supply chain independence, and still have enough money left over to put up a second ISS, especially if you assume that we could orbit a second one for a lot closer to the initial estimates.

            To get back to the article,

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by khallow ( 566160 )

              Ok, the wind turbine thing has a great deal of merit. To be honest, I think it'll happen anyway especially now that the Europeans are blazing the trail with their huge scale operations. And since these things are making money, they'll go up everywhere.

              To get back to the article, something that I will never understand is NASA's willingness to de-orbit space stations.

              I think deorbiting MIR was pretty shameful. But there are valid economic reasons to deorbit. First, as you say we're looking at two real, no maintenance possibilities, deorbit or park in van Allen. Putting the ISS in a long term LEO is dangerous since it'll be

  • Typical Discovery Channel... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tgd ( 2822 ) on Thursday June 26, 2008 @04:35AM (#23946497)

    Half the "projects" are imaginary, the other half are explained poorly or just plain wrong.

    Trans-atlantic tunnel? Space elevator? We might as well say the establishment of psychohistory and a Foundation to guide the development of humanity is an equally large science project.

    And whats with the passing jab at cold fusion in the ITER blurb? Poor attempt at a joke? Author who doesn't understand the difference? Or perhaps someone not aware about how much research actually is happening in that space?

    I'd say they should be embarassed, but they're probably off watching "Ghost Hunters", I think the new season started on the Discovery Channel recently ...

    • Re:Typical Discovery Channel... (Score:4, Funny)

      by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Thursday June 26, 2008 @09:40AM (#23949057)

      At least theyre not watching the history channel. I believe the current lineup is:

      5pm: Jesus vs Bigfoot. Which one is hiding in the wilderness?

      6pm: Rare Sighting: Hitler's Ghost. Does it have a message for us?

      7pm: Random "Weekly World News" articles turned into TV shows.

      8pm: Some random thing about Rome with lots of gladiatorial combat and boobage.

      9pm: 9/11 conspiracy theories.

      10pm: An Atlantis "documentary"

      11pm: Another Atlantis "docuentary" this time with quotes for certified "researchers."

      12pm: Something else about Jesus, Hitler, or 9/11. Or all three at once (Hitler planned 9/11 when Jesus was sleeping.)

  • From TFA:

    2. Next-stop, cold fusion?: The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)

    This first-ever demo-level fusion reactor will be built in southern France and promises to deliver the world's first sustained fusion reactions; In layman's terms: more bang for your buck. And at a projected cost of CDN $14.4 billion, it better.

    When the eight-year construction project is complete (scheduled for late 2015), ITER will generate 500 MW of fusion power for extended periods of time.

    For those not in the

  • I remember it being Indy speaking to his dean buddy...

    Indy had just commented on the tough year they had with the loss of both his father and Marcus (former dean) he then commented to the new dean that they seemed to be at an age where life had stopped giving them things and started taking them away. I am reasonably sure this is accurate...

      I will let you know for sure when it comes out on DVD. Not worth paying to see twice.

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