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The Pulsar Development Facility is an implausibly expensive and unspeakably dangerous research facility and public works boondoggle in Night Vale. Extensive property tax increases were introduced to fund the multibillion-dollar facility, which ultimately aims to develop the first ever man-made pulsar. Although the rapidly spinning neutron stars are usually only created in the aftermath of supernovas, the Pulsar Development Facility aims to create a pulsar roughly four miles in diameter, with a "nearly incomprehensible" density that will make it about half the mass of the sun. The Pulsar Development Facility projects that their pulsar will produce enough energy to power the earth for "billions of years". In the event that the pulsar is successfully created and does not simply destroy the earth instantaneously, the City Council plans to use the pulsar's energy to light Night Vale High School's football stadium, which still uses whale oil lamps.[1]

Behind the scenes[]

The Pulsar Development Facility seems to be a parody of, in part, advanced high-energy particle colliders like the Large Hadron Collider, which some members of the public feared could potentially produce stable microscopic black holes or strangelets when activated, resulting in the destruction of the earth. Of course, physicists tried to explain, to no avail, that the risks of high-energy particle collision experiments were actually next to nonexistent, as particle collisions of much higher energy levels than even the most advanced particle collider can produce routinely occur throughout the universe. The sudden development of a terrestrial pulsar, on the other hand, would certainly destroy the earth nearly instantaneously.

References[]

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