That orb in the middle of the apparatus is The Demon Core, a piece of plutonium produced during the Manhattan Project, for a third nuke which was never needed. So it was used for criticality experiments, which is where those hemispheres come in.
Anyway, in those experiments it was key in a few accidents, which caused the deaths by radiation of several researchers. After the later bout of experiments, the core was scrapped.
What’s the middle bottom one?
Demon Core
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core
That orb in the middle of the apparatus is The Demon Core, a piece of plutonium produced during the Manhattan Project, for a third nuke which was never needed. So it was used for criticality experiments, which is where those hemispheres come in.
Anyway, in those experiments it was key in a few accidents, which caused the deaths by radiation of several researchers. After the later bout of experiments, the core was scrapped.
A little more reading in case you’re interested
Idk how you can include all this but not the Kyle Hill documentary
https://youtu.be/aFlromB6SnU
Good point, thanks for pointing to it.
(Also, pro tip: take off that ?si=… stuff from your link, that’s tracking tags)
A fun little experiment you can do at home!