Sandia Lab’s Z machine: the fastest gun in the west
Sandia researcher Marcus Knudson considers his favorite apparatus: the Z insert that sends flyer plates hurling at phenomenal speeds. (Photo by Randy Montoya)
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Article Summary
June 10, 2005 Scientists at the United States Sandia National Nuclear Security Administration Labs have accelerated a small plate from zero to 76,000 mph in less than a second. Sandia’s Z Machine is sometimes referred to as the fastest gun in the West but is actually the fastest in the world, and it is now able to propel small plates at 34 kilometers a second, faster than the 30 km/sec that Earth travels through space in its orbit about the sun, 50 times faster than a rifle bullet, and three times the velocity needed to escape Earth’s gravitational field. The immediate purpose of these very rapid flights is to help understand the extreme conditions found within the interiors of the giant planets Saturn and Jupiter, hasten the achievement of virtually unlimited energy through peacetime atomic fusion, and provide more information about the condition of the U.S. nuclear stockpile without having to explode a nuclear weapon.
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