Texas A&M University is going to blow stuff up in the name of science. At worst, they’re definitely proving that you’re a sucker if you choose any other field of scientific research other than the one where you get to explode stuff to learn how to mitigate damage from real-world explosion hazards.

Inside its newly launched Detonation Research Test Facility (DRTF), researchers now have the largest academic lab on Earth dedicated to controlled explosions. It’s a carefully engineered facility designed to recreate terrifyingly destructive forces and, hopefully, control them enough to be able to better understand them.

At the center of the facility is an almost 500-foot tube filled with a methane-air mixture. When ignited, it produces a shockwave that can reach speeds of Mach 5. The facility, outfitted with all sorts of sensors, lasers, and high-speed diagnostic tools, captures every fraction of a second of the explosion as flames rapidly progress toward full-on detonation.

Texas A&M’s New Science Lab Is Basically a Giant Explosion Machine

It’s all in an effort to figure out how a small flame quickly escalates into a catastrophic blast, in the hope of reducing industrial disasters such as gas leaks or fuel depot explosions. In this controlled setting, researchers can create blasts big enough to destroy entire facilities and take countless lives, and all without hurting anyone or destroying anything.

Those are its earthly scientific applications. Since many of the same physical principles that govern explosions on Earth also power some of the universe’s most spectacular events, like supernovae, the DRTF will give researchers a controlled way to study space without needing a dying star nearby.

The team also thinks it can use the facility to test hypersonic air travel engines that could potentially push an aircraft to wild (and hopefully safe) speeds, reducing a 6+ hour cross-country flight to maybe about an hour or so.