1.4 Instagrams
This is a price worth paying.
Meanwhile, prepare for and additional 30-40 instagrams to be dropped on ISIS while Ahmed Chalabi (yes, the guy with the fake WMD) is again in the run for Iraqi top dog.
Work has commenced on the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), the 40-metre-class 'scope that will sit atop Chile's Cerro Armazones mountain and collect thirteen times more light than any comparable instrument. The project almost started with a bang: this video starts with plenty of tedious speeches before, at about the …
Funny you mentioned shit. Ammonium Nitrate fertiliser smell like shit. When AN is mixed with Fuel Oil, it becomes the least explosive (ANFO) for blowing the tops off mountains (ask WV). I expect that many more tank trucks, loaded with ANFO (maybe 10M pounds of liquid) will make the run up the switch backs to the top, before they are done.
Seriously? you give Scientists a bunch of instagrams to build a super-villian style mountain top lair, let them blow the top of the mountain away, and all we get to see is a little whisp of cloud?
Dammit as an outraged tax payer I'd expect the governments mad-science budget to [i]at least[/i] give us a decent explosion once in a while.....
Boffin: We'd like to have an Extremely Large Telescope on top of <points at map> this mountain. Can you do that?
Engineer: How large?
B: Umm, 285.71429 linguini
E: That's just the 'scope, right? So the building would be <scribbles on fag packet>, hmm, and you want a bit of space to walk around it, park the Landy, so, say, <scribbles some more, whips out slide rule> 18.270745 by 32.54149 doubledecker buses.
B: Extrapolating from the size of my shed, yes, sounds right to me.
E: Now, mountain tops are rather pointy, although this one's not as pointy as quite a few others. Of course we could build an Extremely Large Platform for your telescope, but there's another way. Mind if we simply lop off <scribbles again> about onepointthree brontosauruses, to flatten the top?
B: That's 0.17949511166 percent more air between us and space, but I think we can manage. Okay.
E: Right, I'll be off now. If you need me, you'll want to call my Iridium number; I don' think we have GSM coverage there yet. <pulls out phone, speed-dials the Dyno Nobel representative>