ESO's headquarters in Garching in Germany, is growing by 4.5 terabytes a year, and is expected to swell to 100 terabytes by 2005.

ECONOMIST: Mining the digital skies

The Wendelstein 7-AS, a tiddler with a fuel capacity of but a single cubic metre, was built by the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics at Garching, Germany, and operated from 1988 to 2002.

ECONOMIST: Fusion power