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You'd think that blowback from the Deepwater oil disaster would make companies more cautious about drilling deep into the Earth in search of black gold. But a terrific article by Discover's Mac Margolis reveals drilling is only getting more extreme. More »
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No, this isn't a secret UFO installation. It's a natural underground gas tank that contains over a billion cubic meters of helium, important in many industrial processes, located under America's Great Plains. It's covered in mines, domes, and pipelines. More »
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Nuclear reactors are an unlikely source of art, but the complex workings of these machines have a strange, industrial beauty to them. These incredibly detailed wall charts explain the inner workings of the machines and display them in cutaways. More »
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This is actually a massive boring device, captured by the Department of Energy. Geoff Manaugh of BLDG BLOG came across it a few days ago. More »
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Check out this scary video of a Terminator-esque "harvester" machine that cuts a tree down, shaves its branches and bark off, and then spits it out in perfect, standard log lengths. (Thanks, Gregory!) More »
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So you already know about autonomous aerial vehicles being used in combat and surveillance — they're little planes that look almost like toys. Not so with the next generation of autonomous vehicles. A group of researchers at Carnegie Mellon have just won a contract to create a robotic system that would make this badass 797B Caterpillar mining vehicle into an autonomous hulk with no driver on board. This is clearly one of Skynet's minions in the making. More »
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When you see a picture of molten steel pouring out of a faucet into the sink, you might guess it's a piece of art rather than an actual industrial machine. But this image is quite real, and I wouldn't recommend rinsing your hands in that sink. It's a photo from a French factory that manufactures steel tubes for oil and gas lines. Below, we've got more insane steel goo, plus an artist's homage to giant ladles of molten steel. More »
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This gigantic tool is an ore-grinding machine at the Kumtore gold mine, the largest in Central Asia. The mine clings to the side of the Tien Shien mountain range, 4200 meters above sea level in Issyk Kul Province, Kyrgyzstan. Want to see the process of smelting gold up there in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan? More »
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