Field research

Magnetic field, that is.  "Black gold, Texas ..."  No, want a minute, that's not right.

The ATLAS Barrel Toroid, the world's largest superconducting magnet, has been successfully powered up and tested at CERN's Large Hadron Collider.  After being cooled down to 4 Kelvin over a six-week period, it was gradually powered up over the course of about two months, reaching a peak current of 21,000 amps.

Yeah.  But if that number, which is 500 amps over "nominal field", makes your eyebrows rise, try this one for size:  At that current, the stored magnetic energy in the field was 1.1 GJ.  After being powered off, it took ten days for the field to decay, raising the temperature of the magnet from 4 Kelvin to 53 Kelvin.

The article doesn't state the actual field strength.  But that's one holy hell of a magnetic field.

(Click the thumbnail for some serious "Ooh!  SHINY!")

(Link from mrmeval)

Collision avoidance

Sometimes, the trouble with trying to avoid a collision with Wen the Eternally Surprised is that her motion can closely approximate a random drunkards-walk.