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Transport of the future? Europe's longest hyperloop center opens

https://techxplore.com/news/2024-03-fut ... enter.html
Europe's longest tunnel for testing hyperloop technology opens Wednesday in the Netherlands, with operators hoping passengers could one day be whisked from Amsterdam to Barcelona in a couple of hours.

On a disused railway center near Veendam in the north of the country sits a sleek Y-shaped white tunnel 420 meters (1,380 feet) long made up of 34 interconnected pipes around 2.5 meters wide.

Nearly all the air is sucked out of the tunnel to reduce air resistance and a vehicle is propelled using magnets at speeds that could eventually reach 1,000 kilometers per hour.

The European Hyperloop Center is the world's only facility to feature a "lane switch", a tunnel branching off from the main track, allowing scientists to test what happens when a vehicle changes course at high speed.