Osmium Tetroxide blog: Soviet Science. Part 1

PART 2

The magical country that passed away left behind a rich legacy. The type of economy has changed, and the agenda of research institutes, instead of developing science at any cost, has been replaced by rationalization. In this post, I present photos from several institutes of different scientific fields, of varying preservation and varying degrees of abandonment.

Let's start with the laboratory, which we called the Laboratory for the Study of Alien Life Forms.

This is partly true because it had to do with radiation coming to us from outer space.

Specific equipment in several rooms tells us the main areas of work: radiochemistry and electrochemistry.

Glove boxes with an independent ventilation system were intended for sample preparation and the creation of spectral models of valuable samples.

The disassembled ventilation, the table with the dishes laid out, and the glasses show that the lab is no longer as it used to be.

One of the coolest installations here is this two-chamber spectrometer with a large lead box. The box consists of successive layers of sheet steel, paraffin, lead, and cadmium to completely shield the sample being examined in the spectrometer from external radiation. The doors are slid in by a worm gear drive. Impressive device.

Each flash of the camera in the rooms showed our presence.

It did not take long for the guards to react. Luckily, the headlights of their car, flashing when they started the engine, notified us, so escaping and crossing the fence was in a hurry, but with a good head start.

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The next lab is also ray-related but to rays with a different wavelength.

It is more alive than the previous one.

Here the living combines with the dead. To get to the working part, the scientists must pass by covered old installations.

What wasn't covered in polyethylene is covered with a thick layer of dust.

A small anechoic chamber.

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An institute too cool even for Soviet standards nowadays is doomed to perish.

A vast scientific complex was abandoned back in the 90s.

The condition of the rooms, going from bad to good, can be explained by the fact that people did not leave their workplaces at one day.

The heart of this complex is a giant tube with optical installations. Here is one of its control rooms.

The tube itself is an isolated chamber, divided inside into compartments, separated from each other by hermetic doors and hatches.

But something the amateur doesn't understand. Only a physicist that specializes in such things can tell us about the true purpose of the installations located here.

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To have a better look at something smaller thing, you must build a bigger thing. What a paradox.

Why build a large electron microscope when there are desktop versions?

The answer lies in the properties of matter. The fact is that material can be thinned without losing its properties only up to a certain limit. Once this limit is reached, a nanomaterials phenomenon begins to prevail. The sample must be thinned to the size that the energy of the microscope's electron gun can penetrate. But what if the sample has to be thinned so thin that it loses its properties in order to work with an ordinary microscope? Build a large microscope with more electron energy!

There on top is a sealed barrel with coolant. It is needed to cool the high-voltage unit and the electron gun, the main part of the electron microscope. The gun shoots electrons into the column with electromagnetic lenses, which concentrate and focus the electrons on the sample and then direct them to the recording device, which creates a picture on a computer screen.

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The next lab also studied processes on a small scale, to apply them to real objects. For example, it studied the effect of blast waves on buildings and other structures.

A model was placed inside this installation and blown into it with compressed air or even blow gases. The process was recorded on a film camera (that big gray thing).