Inside the Extreme Machine That Mimics Bombs and Black Holes

Machines like Z are the only way—short of exploding a weapon or sojourning inside the sun—to measure how matter behaves in extreme environments.
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Randy Montoya

It’s 5:15 a.m. and dark when I drive over Raton Pass, the 7,835-foot-high saddle right at the boundary between Colorado and New Mexico. Animal crossing signs whiz by my window: first a clip-art bear, then an elk, then a deer. “Watch out” is an apt way to enter the state, particularly on this trip: New Mexico is the birthplace of the nuclear bomb and the site of its first test. That initial blast occurred southeast of Socorro, under the auspices of Los Alamos National Lab-led Manhattan Project. But today, I'm headed for a different research facility.

Sandia National Laboratories is tasked, in part, with studying nuclear weapons. But the lab, located in Albuquerque, also investigates the fundamental nature of the universe itself. And my ultimate destination inside Sandia’s secure gates—the ominously-named Z-machine—can do both.

The Z-machine harnesses electricity to create extreme conditions that match those in nuclear bomb detonations, (hypothetical) fusion reactors, and the centers of stars. Machines like Z are the only way—short of exploding a weapon or sojourning inside the sun, neither of which is recommended—to measure how matter behaves in these environments. It's all part of Sandia's main mission: "keeping the US nuclear stockpile safe, secure, and effective."

When I arrive at Sandia, I get a visitor badge and go through the gate into Kirtland Air Force Base, speckled with low, neutrally-colored buildings. The lab is government-owned—by the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration—and company-operated, staffed by civilians. These are trying times for the overseeing Department of Energy, which itself will most likely be overseen by Rick Perry, if he's confirmed. Rick Perry, who reportedly thought his new gig was more about oil and gas and less about radioactive material and the research around it.

And then there's the president's nuclear policy to wonder about.

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Sandia's future, and that of its intersecting research branches, will surely be different from its present.

The Wagon Wheel

As we approach Z, a jet of some sort flies by the minivan—low, fast—and my escort politely reminds me, although I am not taking pictures, that I am not allowed to take pictures of the world outside Z.

Which is fine, because the world inside Z is bonkers. The machine is made up of 2,160 capacitors, which ring a 104-foot-wide wagon wheel sitting in a huge tank filled with liquid—water or oil, depending on the experiment. The capacitors sit there, electricity coiled up inside like a snake.

When the scientists are ready, the capacitors discharge, sending 20 dynamite sticks’ worth of energy pounding through the submerged, spoke-like cables. They're aiming at a target in the wheel's hub, which is nestled inside a 20-foot high cylinder—a vacuum, so air particles don't interfere with the experiment. In 100 nanoseconds, the capacitors' energy pulses into the target, filling the apparatus with purple arcs of electricity.

Charge capacitors, discharge capacitors, boom.

As the target's temperature and pressure increase, they approach or achieve what's necessary for atoms to combine with atoms in a fusion reaction. “When Z fires, a shock wave comes by,” says Joel Lash, the facility's senior manager, who works in the building next door. “The ceiling tiles shake.”

I won't be feeling any shock waves today, though. Z is in clean-up mode. The shooting destroys the experiment, so the team has to clean the whole apparatus and build new targets every time. Right now, the room looks like a factory floor, a jumble of metal staircases and guardrails and gangplanks, a 20-ton yellow crane looming over the ensemble.

A minute after we enter the facility, an alarm goes off: A diver has just entered the water. “He doesn’t have flippers,” says Lash. He’d hurt himself on all the metal, so he just has to crawl around.

The crew got in around 6 a.m. to begin preparing Z for its next shot. First, the crane lifts that 20-foot cylinder and places it in a kind of exterminator’s tent, where the team grinds away debris. At the center of the circle, three people circle the hole the cylinder left behind, pressing Scotch-Brite pads against the metal walls. After cleaning, the team—made up of people with mechanical experience from places like motorcycle shops, Lash says—will build the center of the machine back up again, put the lid back on, pump the air out to get a good vacuum, and aim to do the next shot around 5 p.m.

This whole process happens around 150 times a year. They create; they destroy; they repeat. “We start over every day,” says Lash. “There’s really nothing else like it on the planet.”

Nuclear Future

Maybe not on the planet itself. But outside the Earth's atmosphere, space does essentially what Z does. Z is like art in that way, representing and interpreting the world at the same time. Z can replicate the extremes of the physical universe at the same time it helps guide decisions about military strategy and energy policy.

This mixture pervades Sandia, which—although nuclear at its core—also works on sustainable energy systems, climate research, “technical solutions for global security” to which I am not privy, checking up on other countries’ nuclear arsenals, cybersecurity, and battery development, among other (largely classified) things and more basic science research.

Sandia’s place in culture seems more important than it has any time since the Cold War. With a federal administration focused on outside threats, the lab's funding is less likely to drop off a cliff than other scientific facilities. But the funding for the non-military-focused science that happens there—Z’s basic matter research, climate and alternative energy work—might not have the same safety. Who knows, though?

Well, maybe Lash. As I leave Z, I ask him if he’s heard anything much about the future from the Trump administration. He hasn’t.

“Maybe I’ll tweet at them,” he says.