From land to sea to space, scientists are using incredible tools to make new discoveries. These are the ten largest instruments in use around the world. Subscribe to TDC: null Music: “Awakening” - Silent Partner - YouTube Audio Library “Midnight City” - Audioblocks.com Far Away - MK2 - YouTube Audio Library "Space Fighter Loop" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ All visual media used under the protection of "Fair Use' in US Copyright Law. Like our page on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/thedailyconversation Follow us on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/thedailyconvo Inspired by: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-07/supersized-10-most-awe-inspiring-projects-universe Wall-e is Canada’s remote controlled seafloor crawler that gathers data on tectonic plate movements, ocean temperatures, salinity, methane content, and sediment characteristics for the NEPTUNE Ocean Observatory Project. The Very Large Array is a combination of 27 individual radio telescopes listening to the wavelengths of the cosmos. The individual telescopes are positioned to gather data cooperatively as if they were one large telescope 22 miles wide. Each antenna is attached to rail lines, allowing astronomers to configure their positions to optimize wavelength focal points. The VLR has made key observations of black holes and stars, discovered magnetic filaments and traced complex gas motions at the Milky Way’s center. Juno is one of the fastest objects man has ever built, traveling 134,000 miles per hour toward Jupiter where it will enter the planet’s orbit around the 4th of July, 2016. Once in orbit, Juno will study Jupiter’s composition, gravity and magnetic fields, and polar magnetosphere before burning up in Jupiter’s outer atmosphere. The Mars Curiosity Rover has been roaming around the surface of the red planet since Aug. 2012 and has assessed that ancient Mars could have been hospitable to microbial life. The generator behind the 2,000 lb car-sized rover produces electricity from the decay of radioactive isotopes. Curiosity'​s design will serve as the basis for a follow-up Mars rover mission set to launch in the summer of 2020. The Earthscope is like a heart monitor for the North American continent. Boreholes dug from the earth’s surface, some a mile-and-a-half into the ground, are spread throughout the 48 contiguous states to monitor 3.8 million square miles of seismic activity and lava flow. Since its inception in 2003, over 67 terabytes of data have been collected, with another terabyte being added every six weeks. The Spallation Neutron Source facility contains the most intense neutron beam accelerator in the world. Every year about 700 researchers from universities, national laboratories, and the private sector gather to fire ions at 90% the speed of light through a maze of instruments to monitor how these neutrons scatter. This information that has applications in many fields, including structural biology, biotechnology, magnetism, superconductivity, chemical and engineering materials, and nanotechnology. The International Space Station is the largest man made object orbiting the Earth, and is so large, you can see it with the naked eye from your back porch. Six astronauts at a time get to call the ISS home while conducting experiments in biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and space technology. Recently, those on board grew and ate their own red romaine lettuce, the first time produce has been produced entirely in space. Man’s looking glass into the cosmos is the Hubble Telescope, equipped with an eight foot mirror capable of taking extremely high-resolution pictures of galaxies millions of light years away, like this famous image, the “Pillars of Creation.” It’s observations have led to major breakthroughs in astrophysics, including determining the rate of expansion of the universe. Its scientific successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is scheduled for launch in 2018. The National Ignition Facility uses the world’s largest and most powerful laser - capable of reaching 100 million degrees and 100 billion times the pressure of the earth’s atmosphere - to try and harness nuclear fusion energy. A small, but crucial step toward this goal was made last year, when -- for the first time -- scientists generated more energy than they put into the nuclear fuel. And the world’s largest scientific instrument is the Large Hadron Collider that spans 17 miles, and is buried 574 feet underground along the Switzerland-France border. Here, researchers have replicated the first millionth of a second of the Big Bang by smashing subatomic particles called neutrinos into each other at the speed of light.