images and content from UG1-6 PDF on the C-II Laser Ring Research Facility
I stumbled upon this very cool place yesterday at a picnic with some friends, and was very surprised to find it here in Christchurch.
Burried into the Port Hills of Christchurch City, hidden in an old and abandoned World War II bunker is a (now disused) C-II Laser Ring Facility. For years any laser ring research was left for airborne guidance systems, but in the 80s and 90s in New Zealand a land-based, larger, laser ring system was developed to sutdy geophysical phenomena.
The C-II Laser Ring Research Facility was used to perfom experiments in measuring the rotation of the Earth, it is also capable of detecting earthquakes from up to 93° away, and detecting lunar cycle interactions with the tidal cycle.
I was very excited to hear that Christchurch had a cool physics experiment going on at some point, even though recent earthquakes have more than put that particular facility out of use.
Do you know of any cool science going on in your city?
