In the wilderness, a computer readies a new nuclear arsenal

[seafan]

In the wilderness, a computer readies a new nuclear arsenal

By Tim Reid
April 7, 2006


On a rare tour of the US nuclear laboratory in Los Alamos, our correspondent is shown a project to replace warheads that many believe Britain is not only watching but is deeply involved in.

http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,286679,00.jpg
"Dance" is a new installation that captures electrons and will be an integral part of the new replacement warhead programme (Peter Nicholls/The Times)


DEEP in the heart of America’s leading nuclear weapons complex sits a computer so large that it fills a room the size of a football field — a dazzling spectacle of blinking lights that churns out 20 trillion mathematical calculations a second.
Named “Q”, after the gadget-inventing boffin in the James Bond films, it is the nerve centre of the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory, a 40,000 square mile (104,000 sq km) complex deep in the wilderness of New Mexico ringed with high-security fencing and armed guards.

Here a 67m (220ft) long electron accelerator X-rays exploding uranium at a billion frames per second. Here some of the world’s most brilliant physicists operate gas guns, electron microscopes and neutron scatterers and pore over data like excited children. Here, six decades ago, the atom bomb was born when the secret Manhattan Project produced Little Boy and Fat Man, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today Los Alamos is focused on creating a new generation of nuclear warheads.

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-2122600_1,00.html

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[seafan]

1. Kick for the morning. n/t