Why Scientists Are So Concerned With How Fusion Reactors Sound
Fusion reactors are some of the most sophisticated feats of engineering humankind has developed so far. They don't work especially well at generating power yet, in part because fusing atoms here on Earth is so dang hard, but they do still pull it off, and generate bursts of super-heated plasma in all manner of nightmarishly complicated reactors.
Recently, the always-inquisitive Tom Scott took a trip to JET, the Joint European Torus fusion reactor, also known as the hottest place in the solar system, at least when it is on. And among the interesting things he discovered, is the importance of speakers in the control room so that scientists can hear the reactor while it's on.
The logic goes like this: supercomputers are great at dealing with thousands of variables and reacting with speeds a human could never accomplish. Humans, meanwhile, have this uncanny knack for telling when something is just....off. And that is exactly what the speakers are for, so techs can listen for a weird rattle, or other strange things a computer might not pick up on.
At least once, according to JET's operators, these speakers helped them track down a loose clamp in the torus's immense and complicated structure. So even when it comes to hyper complex wonders of engineering, there's just no replicating a good old gut-level hunch.
Source: Tom Scott
