In addition to being the most awesome-looking piece of machinery I have ever seen, the Large Helical Device is billed as the “largest superconducting stellarator in the world”. This Japanese fusion research device consists of intertwined coils of superconducting material, and is designed to contain a 100-million-degree nuclear fusion plasma. The research aims to solve the many engineering challenges that must be overcome in order for fusion reactors to produce more energy than they consume.

Ferrofluid is a magnetic liquid. Bay Area natives may remember playing with an exhibit at the Exploratorium in which you pass a powerful magnet underneath a black fluid and watch as smooth spikes arise and merge. Japanese artist Sachiko Kodama uses ferrofluids and electromagnets to uncover the surprising creative possibilities of this medium. I’ve just received my own bottle to experiment with.

The Ocean Observatories Initiative is a project by the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology to bring live streaming video and data from the deep sea to internet users for free. It should be available in the “next few years.” (via SF Gate)

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will collect 90 terabytes of images of the whole night sky every three days using a 3-billion-pixel camera, in order to detect faint long-term astronomical changes, or rapid changes that we don’t normally see because we were looking at the wrong part of the sky at the time.  The 8.4 meter LSST is scheduled to go online in 2013.