Near the top of Italy’s heel, there’s a mysterious-looking structure – an absolutely huge circle, 4 kilometres across! You might guess that this is a particle accelerator, but in fact it’s a perfectly circular high-speed test track – The Nardò Ring.

The ring is 12.5 km in circumference (around 7.8 miles) and is banked all the way round to allow the cars to achieve their absolute maximum top speed; which in practice means that a driver often need not turn the wheel at all once they get going. Essentially, cars can drive in a continuous straight line and yet somehow always end up exactly where they started…

The official site and the Wikipedia page are a little lacking, but see our other post about the Super Secret Volkswagen Test Track if you found this interesting.

Thanks to Ben, Luca D, munehiro, wanten, Luca, Rob James, woowoowoo, Craig, Dave, nixx, Alice Rizzoli, Mark, Francesco, Patrick and finally Tom!

Synchrotrons are just a fancy type of particle accelerator.

I’m not the world’s greatest physicist but, as far as I understand it, they are circular accelerators that use an electricity field to speed up sub atomic particles to something near the speed of light and a synchronous magnetic field to rotate the beam (hence the name).

The resulting synchrotron radiation is a million times brighter than normal sunlight and a billion times stronger than your everyday X-ray – making it great for looking inside stuff.

One of the first dedicated synchrotrons was built underground in Daresbury, UK, but will close next year.

However, until then you can get a live status display of the beam. I don’t understand it either but it looks cool to leave it on the screen at work.

Lightsources lists 69 different synchrotrons around the globe, so we’re only going to look at a few of the most attractive.

ESRF, Grenoble, France:

NSRRC, Hsinchu, Taiwan

BESSY, Germany:

And finally, Diamond is the UK’s new synchrotron near Didcot, Oxfordshire.

Although on Google Earth construction has just started, the Diamond “light source” (radiation sounded too dangerous) was first used earlier this year.

Coincidently, we last looked at particle accelerators around this time last year. I hereby name this particle accelerator week!

Google Earth Community member ChrisJHall also put together an excellent collection of Synchrotrons.

More info: Back to basics, Synchrotron (device), Synchrotron radiation & Diamond Light Source.

Many thanks to ChrisJHall

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in California is funded by the US Department of Energy but operated by Stanford University. The SLAC has a 3km long underground linear accelerator which is the longest linear accelerator in the world and claimed to be the world’s straightest object. The building above ground on top of the accelerator, the “klystron gallery”, is the longest building in the United States.

The Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois is another US based lab with a linear accelerator but this one uses a Synchrotron. A synchrotron is a circular accelerator that uses a magnetic field to turn the particles and an electric field to accelerate them. By careful tuning of these two fields particles can be accelerated to 99.999999% of the speed of light. Once particles get up to these speeds the experments can begin. The super accelerated particles are shoved through things, bent with mirrors and have other particles injected into the steam to see what happens.

These two circles that look like a sideways eight are the Tevatron at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois and make up the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator. Four miles in circumference, the Tevatron is housed in a tunnel about 30 feet below the big ring you see in the aerial view. The particles complete the four-mile course nearly 50 thousand times a second. Damn, that is fast.

The other big player in particle accelerators in CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the world’s largest physics laboratory. CERN is located on the border between France and Switzerland and is otherwise known as the birth place of that thing called the World Wide Web. CERN have numerous particle accelerators but the biggest is the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC is currently under construction in tunnels that used to house the Large Electron-Positron Collider which ran from 1989 to 2000. This tunnel is 27km in length and 100 metres underground! It’s like something out of Half-Life! Unfortunately there isn’t very much to see from the air, the LHC is located somewhere in the area between Geneava airport and the Jura mountains to the North. I’ve been staring at the imagery for a while and I can’t make out any trace of it on the surface. Can you?

I’m sure there are many more accelerators out there to see but my head was starting to hurt from reading about particle physics. Feel free to post your particle physics related finds as comments on this post!

Thanks: Scott Lawson, dan, Matt, Jason, Rahul Karnik, David, joe, Foo Bar, Matt, Tom, Ilia Baldine, Douglas Boberg, Fred, Dave D, Brian Potter, Steve Abrahamson, Thomas Wade, Laurence Dorazio, Daryl Achilles, Tony Scislaw, Marc Armstrong, Tyler Stevenson, Joe, Luistxo Fernandez, Janx Spirit, David Drexler, David Drexler, Matt W., Matthew, Rodrigo, Joe, Jochen, Matthew Sz., Williamckley, Drew DeMott, Michael Lehet, Hubert Grzywacz, Bjørnven, Thomas, J Foote, Brad Lauster, Dalvenjah FoxFire, Robert Bogdon, cjw, Parker, Jim Duncan, Steve Bryson, Jeffrey Deane, Ryan Means, Benjamin, Jason Harris, David Drexler, Bobllingson, Lennie Stovel, punk floyd, Jason, SFuller and Sounil Yu.

Since launching in April 2005 Google Sightseeing and its founders James and Alex Turnbull have been featured by ABC News, The BBC, The Independent, The Guardian, The New York Post, The LA Times, The Boston Globe, The Tonight Show, Wired, PC World, and many others, some of which are listed below.

James and Alex Turnbull are both available for professional comment on Google Earth, Google Maps and Street View, please get in touch via the Contact page.

• 26th Mar 2009 – ABC News
  James was interviewed for ABC News’ feature on the 7 wonders of Google Earth.

• 26th Mar 2009 – B3TA Newsletter
  Featured in the popular weekly email of “the coolest stuff on the net”.

• 21st Mar 2009 – Your Local Guardian
  Local London newspaper writes about our announcement of the discovery of Wally hidden in the London Street View imagery.

• 20th Mar 2009 – The Times Online
  The Times does a top ten of the best Street View sights as found by Google Sightseeing.

• 20th Mar 2009 – The Guardian
  The Guardian recognises our Twitter feed as the premier source of all things Street View.

• 20th Mar 2009 – The Telegraph
  The Telegraph credits Google Sightseeing with breaking the news of the discovery of Wally in the UK street view imagery

• 20th Mar 2009 – Bike Radar.com
  Cycling website Bike Radar.com uses some of our posts to write a roundup of cycling on Street View.

• 20th Mar 2009 – Daily Mail
  The Daily Fail manages to write an entire article based on our Twitter feed without mentioning us once. They even take the credit for finding several of the sights themselves.

• 19th Mar 2009 – The Guardian
  The Guardian is the first to pick up the launch of Google Street View in the UK and the Netherlands, describing our finds as “Excellent stuff”.

• 3rd Dec 2008 – The Independent
  Alex was interviewed for a virtual tourism article which appeared in print as well as online.

• 12th Nov 2008 – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
  Article about the Street With a View project.

• 2nd Sept 2008 – 10 Amazing Google Earth Add-Ons
  We actually wrote this article for PC World magazine, in which we highlight the top 10 add-ons for Google Earth.

• 8th May 2008 – Boing Boing
  The world’s most popular blog also links to our Street View Sabotage story.

• 7th May 2008 – News.com
  CNET’s News Blog is the first to pick up our Street View Sabotage story.

• 4th May 2008 – Olhar Digital This Brazilian web portal put together this video piece about Brazilian locations that have featured on Google Sightseeing. (Translation of introductory text, and direct link to embedded flash movie)

• 2nd April 2008 – Symmetry Vol 5 Issue 1
  “Labs from space” – The physics magazine for Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford Linear Accelerator Center starts off looking at our entries on particle accelerators but get caught up looking at naked sunbathers instead.

• 6th February 2008 – Geek Sugar
  “Website of the day” – The geek blog for girls recommends Google Sightseeing as website of the day, whilst accusing us of having a “major jones for Google Earth”.

• 17th January 2008 – New York Post
  “When Botanists, Journalists and Google Geeks Collide” – Mike Nizza enjoys our “shouting media criticism” relating to the Mysterious Self-Destructing Palm Tree story.

• 14th October 2007 – The Sunday Post
  Bob Smyth writes about Google Sightseeing and some of our favourite finds. PDF scan courtesy The Sunday Post.

• 9th August 2007 – The London Paper
  Blogging arm of the London based newspaper admit their Google Sightseeing fandom and link to our bizarre traffic accident scene.

• 6th August 2007 – Fox 26
  FOX 26’s “My Tech Guy” Doug Delony features Google Sightseeing as his on-air “Site of the Day” and also blogs about us.

• 26th June 2007 – Wired
  Google Sightseeing is mentioned in the article “Google Maps Is Changing the Way We See the World”.

• 21st June 2007 – Collective
  Collective, the interactive culture magazine, is grateful for our Street View coverage.

• 30th May 2007 – BBC Radio Five Live Drive
  James speaks on live radio about the launch of Google’s Street View service.

• 7th April 2007 – The Mail on Sunday & Daily Record
  The newspapers both re-print our Trampoline story from a few months ago.

• 1st April 2007 – San Francisco Chronicle
  A whole new way to look at the world – A summary of Google Earth mentions Google Sightseeing and some of the sights we’ve featured.

• 8th February 2007 – Telegraph
  Sightseeing from your sofa – Francisca Kellett picks her favourites from recent Google Sightseeing entries.

• 6th February 2007 – Pods and Blogs
  The Blog and Podcast themed weekly radio show speaks to James about India’s efforts to blur images in Google Earth.

• 23rd January 2007 – New York Post
  ABOVE & BEYOND – A two page spread in the New York post talks about the site and features selected entries from our book Off the Map: The Most Amazing Sights on Earth as Seen by Satellite.

• 8th January, 2007 – The Metro
  The Google Sightseeing fans at free newspaper “The Metro” pick up our story of rude crop art.

• 7th January, 2007 – The LA Times
  Pulitzer Prize winner Dan Neil writes an in-depth article about Google Sightseeing and the whole satellite sightseeing phenomenon.

• 7th October, 2006 – Mansized.co.uk
  Five-star review from the online men’s magazine.

• Late September, 2006 – Everywhere
  Our Topless sunbather story goes global, with thousands of Diggs, a Register article, print articles in Danish tabloid Ekstra Bladet and British Newspaper The Metro, and video mentions on Kevin Rose’s Diggnation Video Podcast (starting at about 27:30) and NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

• 14th August, 2006 – San Francisco Chronicle
  Jon Carroll goes looking for mystery in China but gets caught up reading through the archives of Google Sightseeing.

• 9th February, 2006 – The News Tribune
  Jason Hagey writes about a Tacoma store owner who found fame in Google Local and includes a few quotes from James.

• 18th January, 2006 – The Boston Globe
  Starting with the Rowing on the Charles River the Boston Globe recommends getting lost in the Google Sightseeing archives.

• 13th November, 2005 – BBC News 24 – Click Online
  Read The Article or Watch the Show – High / Low (Skip to about 17:20)

• 2nd November, 2005 – PC Magazine
  Google Sightseeing was mentioned in the print article Journey to the Center Of Google Earth and an online extra article links to some of PC Magazine’s favorite Google Sightseeing posts.

• October, 2005 – Orange Technology Email
  The Orange monthly technology email for October 2005 is devoted to Google Sightseeing.

• 21st October, 2005 – IDG Now! (Portugal)
  The team at IDG Now! discover Google Sightseeing and have a go themselves (Translation).

• 17th October, 2005 – Boing Boing
  Probably the world’s most popular blog links to Jesus in a Sand Dune.

• August 2005 – Feedster Top 500
  Feedster ranks Google Sightseeing as the 187th Most Popular Blog.

• 15th August, 2005 – About.com Article
  Wendy Boswell highlights her favourite entries in “Google SightSeeing Redux”.

• 20th June, 2005 – Time Magazine
  Maryanne Murray Buechner lists Time’s 50 coolest websites of 2005. Whilst we’re not in the actual top 50, we are linked to in the description of Google Maps.

• 10th June, 2005 – Kottke.org
  Quick link for the popular American Blogger.

• 8th June, 2005 – Slashdot
  We get Slashdotted from an article on a related Google Maps Hack.

• 4th May, 2005 – Newsweek on MSNBC
  Brad Stone writes about the launch of the satellite data on Google Maps and interviews Alex.

• 27th April, 2005 – Weekly Planet
  Joe Bardi and Max Linksy outline the Google Maps phenomenon and interview James.

• 17th April, 2005 BBC News The BBC News links to Google Sightseeing as part of a news story on the Google Maps launch.

• 15th April, 2005 – Google Blog
  Mentioned (and praised) on the Official Google Blog.

• 14th April, 2005 – The Guardian
  Listed in the “Web Watch” column of the The Guardian.

• April 2005 – Del.icio.us (Also here, and here too)
  Soon after launch Google Sightseeing gets hundreds of Del.icio.us links and for a few days we top the Most Popular Page. As of 23 May ‘08 there’s a total of 4540 links at the three different URLs.