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Comment by russellbeattie | Hacker News Reader

> The Einstein Telescope can only take measurements in a tranquil environment, like that in the border region between the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

I love how this is both true, yet historically quite amusing, not even considering recent European events. Pretty sure that region has more unexploded bombs buried than it has cows. And that area has a lot of cows.

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Unexploded bombs aren't what they're worried about. (That's just a minor safety concern common to innumerable construction projects in many places in Europe.) They are worried about continuous/repeated sources of vibration from either geology or human activities.

The region is relative far from larger cities, so I wouldn't expect many bombs to be there. While there are still plenty of bombs being found in Germany, most of them are in the city centers as bombing was concentrated there.

Well, sure. But the allies bombed just about anywhere for any reason. I'm sure there are many remote fields which could have been holding areas for things that would have made good targets. And if a bomb missed a convoy on either side of a road, it could sink waaaay into a mud bog, not go off and barely leave a trace behind. If that "road" was a temporary detour through farmland for a few months in 1941? Yikes!

I don't know anything about the chemistry of explosives but if those bombs didn't explode for 80 years are they going to explode now? Furthermore they are a problem if they build on them. If one explodes away from the telescope they lose minutes of data, probably not a big deal.

Yes, unfortunately, there is still a risk. Just a few months ago a bomb was set off in the center of Munich at the train station during construction work.

That seem to be a failure of a certain brand analogue computer used for precision bombing at that time. They have to switch to carpet bombing. Still would they just bomb a field I wonder even carpet bombing.

I guess the project would also help with clearing up old bombs. Do they state the budget anywhere? This looks like a BIG project.

I think it's around 10 billion euros IIRC? Definitely more than 1 billion and less than 50

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