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Los Alamos is capturing images of explosions at 7 millionths of a second

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Re: Los Alamos is capturing images of explosions at 7 millionths of a second

#51

Post by bobmarleybiceps »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #46
LAsteNERD wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. But depending on what Congress does, think defense budgets could grow, which would mean more money for defense-positioned Labs like Los Alamos.

Nuclear research is done under the Department of Energy, not DoD. Los Alamos is a DoE lab, and the DoE received major cuts in the recent budget bill, though that shifts energy efficiency research into weapons research and net increases lab funding.

I have heard that their internal review processes for papers have started telling people to not say stuff like "XYZ may be useful for climate research" or "this is an alternative energy source that's environmentally friendly." Like they are literally discouraged from talking about climate stuff at all lol.

Re: Los Alamos is capturing images of explosions at 7 millionths of a second

#52

Post by jjk166 »

stavros wrote: post #44
bombela wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything to avoid using the proper units, you wouldn't want the Americans audience to be enlightened wouldn't you.

What irks me is that they could have abbreviated "7mths of a second" to just "7us" while ADDING clarity!

7ms is 7 milliseconds. Unfortunately 7μs is difficult to type and there isn't a good universal way to abbreviate it in ascii.

Re: Los Alamos is capturing images of explosions at 7 millionths of a second

#53

Post by stavros »

jjk166 wrote: post #52
stavros wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What irks me is that they could have abbreviated "7mths of a second" to just "7us" while ADDING clarity!

7ms is 7 milliseconds. Unfortunately 7μs is difficult to type and there isn't a good universal way to abbreviate it in ascii.

Eh, 7us is fine.

Re: Los Alamos is capturing images of explosions at 7 millionths of a second

#54

Post by jjk166 »

rkomorn wrote: post #43
chasd00 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7 μs is also the time it takes light to travel about 1,400 Ariana Grandes.

In which direction? Presumably side to side?

Due to relativity the length of Ariana Grande will appear to change such that all observers agree on the same speed of light.

Re: Los Alamos is capturing images of explosions at 7 millionths of a second

#55

Post by AlotOfReading »

bobmarleybiceps wrote: post #51
AlotOfReading wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear research is done under the Department of Energy, not DoD. Los Alamos is a DoE lab, and the DoE received major cuts in the recent budget bill, though that shifts energy efficiency research into weapons research and net increases lab funding.

I have heard that their internal review processes for papers have started telling people to not say stuff like "XYZ may be useful for climate research" or "this is an alternative energy source that's environmentally friendly." Like they are literally discouraged from talking about climate stuff at all lol.

Wouldn't surprise me. Getting rid of the other research programs won't be great for the labs though. The weapons research has a bunch of weird incentives because of the geopolitical context it exists in. The goal usually isn't to operationalize research, it's to have credible evidence of a functioning nuclear program, maintain the arsenal, and act as a jobs program for nuclear physics. The other programs act as a way to operationalize things in socially acceptable ways. If you get rid of them, I suspect the labs aren't going to be better-off for it even with more funding.

Re: Los Alamos is capturing images of explosions at 7 millionths of a second

#56

Post by thaumasiotes »

thfuran wrote: post #48
SECProto wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say you described "one seven millionth" of a second (1/7,000,000 s) "Seven millionths" would be 7/1,000,000 s (7μs). They take 20 to 40 images in that period using 7 cameras, so any given camera might be as low as 1.4μs per frame.

Yes, but they said seven-millionths of a second, not seven millionths of a second. Technically they're right that that's what it means, but I'd expect an editor to recommend against that phrasing in favor of the one you used to avoid confusion.

Well, it's true that the article says "seven-millionths".

I would guess it's a lot more likely that this is an editing failure, introducing a hyphen where no hyphen should be, than that they meant to divide a second into seven million equal parts.

For one thing, as SECProto alludes to, English would normally require you to say "less than a seven-millionth of a second" if that was what you meant. There's no such thing as saying "less than weeks". You have to specify less than how many weeks.

    less than (seven) (millionths of a second)
ordinary grammar, ordinary unit choice

    less than (seven millionths of a second)
improper grammar, bizarre unit choice.

Re: Los Alamos is capturing images of explosions at 7 millionths of a second

#57

Post by thfuran »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #56
thfuran wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but they said seven-millionths of a second, not seven millionths of a second. Technically they're right that that's what it means, but I'd expect an editor to recommend against that phrasing in favor of the one you used to avoid confusion.

Well, it's true that the article says "seven-millionths". I would guess it's a lot more likely that this is an editing failure, introducing a hyphen where no hyphen should be, than that they meant to divide a second into seven million equal parts. For one thing, as SECProto alludes to, English would normally require you to say "less than a seven-millionth of a second" if that was what you meant. There's no such thing…

I agree based on the whole sentence in the article that that was probably an editing error.

Re: Los Alamos is capturing images of explosions at 7 millionths of a second

#58

Post by 1970-01-01 »

bombela wrote: post #17

7mths? What unit is that. Did they mean 7μs resolution? How is that special? I see youtubers doing nanoseconds. edit: here is the important information in this article. > Scorpius is a new accelerator project planned for the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) that will use an electron beam that can be broken into customized pulses to deliver x-rays and capture multiple images only hundreds of nanoseconds apart. So…

7 months/seconds - Its both a dimensionless quantity and a variable. Very impressive. Los Alamos is taking the USA's 'anything but metric units for measuring' to new levels.

Re: Los Alamos is capturing images of explosions at 7 millionths of a second

#59

Post by gopher_space »

gosub100 wrote: post #22
meager_wikis wrote: post #16

Every time I read about one of the national labs doing this research, I wonder how much longer we will head about these. I feel fairly positive that DOGE's layoffs and budget cuts mean this output will fade away in time.

[flagged]

There's no scenario where messing with a working system people rely on and then getting rid of everyone who understood it will produce a savings. What DOGE has done would simply destroy a corporation, and we know this because we've helped corporations perform this kind of system analysis and understand the cost of change.

We're at a point right now where we can't even calculate the damage Musk has done, where the discovery process on that issue alone will be a multi-million years long effort. We're looking at large-scale remediation projects on every system Trump gave him access to because the cost of not doing that is functionally unknowable. E.g. every table DOGE had the ability to change is now a legal liability per row.

Re: Los Alamos is capturing images of explosions at 7 millionths of a second

#60

Post by _n_b_ »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #46
LAsteNERD wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. But depending on what Congress does, think defense budgets could grow, which would mean more money for defense-positioned Labs like Los Alamos.

Nuclear research is done under the Department of Energy, not DoD. Los Alamos is a DoE lab, and the DoE received major cuts in the recent budget bill, though that shifts energy efficiency research into weapons research and net increases lab funding.

Los Alamos is an NNSA lab; NNSA is a semi-autonomous component of DOE and its weapons activities budget is distinct from the general DOE budget. NNSA’s nonproliferation budget has been cut but they’re still very well funded on the weapons side even if they’ve lost quite a lot of people in the last few months.

The national labs are organized under the Office of Science (17 labs), NNSA (LANL, LLNL, Sandia), the Office of Nuclear Energy (INL), the Office of Environmental Management (Savannah River), Office of Fossil Energy (NETL), and Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (NREL). Some offices are doing better than others re: funding in the current environment!

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