Science: Sudden Zeus

In a quiet, warehouselike building at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, N. Mex. are six racks of shelves, each 28 ft. long, 3 ft. wide and 20 ft. high. Each rack has seven shelves; on each shelf are 48 grey metal boxes; and the whole thing looks as passive as a shoe factory's inventory. Actually, it is the first half of the Zeus capacitor, one of the world's most violent bits of equipment.

Zeus's job is to store electricity gradually, as in a huge storage tank, and then spit it out as a short but enormously powerful jolt of energy. And Zeus is...

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