16 Massive Scientific Facilities at the Cutting Edge of Research

The Super-Kamiokande is a giant neutrino detector, where thousands of cylinders of water wait for an incredibly rare event: the annihilation of a weakly interacting neutrino when it strongly interacts with regular matter and creates proton decay. The facility won a Nobel in 2015 for the discovery that neutrinos had mass, one more step in understanding how these hard-to-detect particles affect the universe on larger scales.

From Popular Mechanics

Since 1980, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array has tuned in to distant galaxies, hunted for alien radio signals, and even discovered things in our solar system, like frozen water on Mercury. Each of the 27 radio telescope dishes are on a track such that they can be moved. That means they can be grouped together tightly into a 2000-square foot area or spread as far apart as 13 miles across.

CERN's Large Hadron Collider discovered the missing particle that gives matter its mass. And that was just the beginning. The 17 miles of tunnel are operating at higher power than ever, hunting for particles never before even theorized, attempting to solve supersymmetry and maybe, just maybe, finding evidence of parallel universes.

In case you missed it, physicists discovered gravitational waves, finally solving Einstein's theories and paving the way for brand new understandings of physics. To do that, two near-identical observatories in Washington and Louisiana have two 2.5 mile vacuum tubes, which fire five laser interferometers each. If those lasers are disturbed by gravitational waves, LIGO detects a positive match. And that's exactly how it caught the whispers of a black hole merger from 1.5 billion years ago.

The Large Hadron Collider is the most powerful particle accelerator in the world. Fermilab's Tevatron, located in suburban Chicago, is the the second most powerful. Operating from 1971 to 2011, the lab was able to verify CERN's results regarding the Higgs-Boson, and made countless particle physics discoveries in its decades of operation.

Arecibo is the largest single aperture radio telescope in the world at about 1000 feet wide, located in the forests of Puerto Rico. The facility tunes in to pulsars, galaxies, and other cosmic phenomena, while occassionally hunting for aliens. Pictured here is the steering mechanism and antenna assembly at the top of the dish.

China is building a 1,650 foot telescope in the hills of Guizho, a remote province. Around 10,000 people are being relocated to give the radio dish a "quiet zone." The $184 million program is meant to dwarf Arecibo in size, and provide the country incredible glimpses of the heavens—and maybe help them hunt for technologically advanced aliens.

Russia's premier weapons testing facility has been in use since the 1970s. This drone video from last year shows the tall, tall Tesla towers in all their monstrous glory. The towers produce intense amounts of energy to ensure the durability of insulative materials on aircraft, vehicles, and weapons.

In 2014, the Air Force, Navy, and DARPA pulled out of the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, transferring it over to the University of Alaska Fairbanks. For 21 years, it had been making ionospheric observations in the Alaskan wilderness. At least, that was the official government line. A cursory Google search will yield mostly conspiracy theories ranging from weather to mind control.

The facility itself is huge: 180 antennas spread across 33 acres. All that to either monitor the ionosphere and test communications capability, or to enslave us all and cause aircraft accidents on purpose.

In Antarctica, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory waits for the passage of neutrinos. Already, it's found dozens, some from outside our solar system. 86 holes just like this one were dug, each about 1.5 miles deep. Neutrino detectors were placed at the bottom of each hole—the detectors need to be buried that deep to prevent interference from other particles passing through. Operating since 2010 after five years of construction that could only happen during the Antarctic summer, the facility has already expanded our understanding of the ghostly neutrino particles.

A total of 66 radio telescope dishes sit high up in the mountainous deserts of Chile, far away from most civilization, allowing it to be one of the most precise radio astronomy observatories in the world. Operating since 2013, the observatory has provided stunning glimpses into our universe's past, studied comets, and made amazing observations of planetary formation.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is California is home to this 10 story chamber where 192 different lasers focus in on particles of hydrogen, attempting to compress them until a fusion reaction occurs. 500 trillion watts of energy are aimed toward the small target in the midst of it all, with the hope being we could someday get more energy back out then we put in—the holy grail of fusion.

At the SLAC National Accelerator Lab, FACET explores the cutting edge of plasma research and provides ultra-hot particle beams for particle accelerator research. It's got a lot of punch packed into a facility the size of a large living room. At peak power, it can produce 10 trillion watts of power, or 2.5 billion 9 volt batteries firing off all at once.

Tianhe-2 is the most powerful supercomputer in the world. There are a total of 16,000 nodes in the supercomputer, which are used to crunch numbers for the Chinese government and aid in national security.

Ontario is home to the second largest nuclear reactor in the world and the largest currently online, the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station. This is the vault, the part of the nuclear generating station where fission occurs. The plant produces 30 percent of Ontario's energy output.

NASA doesn't just send astronauts high above the ocean. It also sends them to this base at the bottom of the coral reef off the coast of the Florida Keys, where they can learn to work in tight spaces and extreme environments. Though NASA utilizes it, Florida International University currently owns the base.