O/T: Higgs boson found today?

[4krow]

I remember working in a factory when I was a kid(6), and they had NO hearing protection!!! I was the first one to put wet tissue in my ears. Sounds were such that you felt higher freq on your clothes. It was wonder that everyone there wasn't deaf.
I also recall a father of a friend of mine took us to the gas processing plant. Like Grainger says, you wore ear plugs and muffs. So amazingly loud(mostly low freq). The giant building shook from it all.

 

[STURMJ]

I worked in a lab using a ultra-centrifuge (separating proteins).  The amazing thing about is was, that while the Tach read 100,000rpms, all you could hear was the 12V cooling fans running.  I took a stethoscope to the lid and only a heard slight vibration, sounding like bearings.  The service tech came one day and I learned that the spinning chamber and motor ran in a vacuum.  I was a frustrating piece, usually you can hear that something is doing its thing, this thing sounded like it was turned on, but was spinning a motor 100Krpm.  The head was a single piece of machined titanium and the spin chamber was 1/2in armor plate stainless steel, in case the head ever failed. The rep said he had seen video of head fail tests and the whole device danced around a room for quite a while. 
The power supply was also very interesting. The motor had to be fed multi channels out of phase of each other in order to get to 100K rpm. This device is a desk top sized instrument, its amazing all this technology was in there.

 

[dbishopbliss]

My favorite Higgs joke so far -

"The Higgs Boson walks into a Catholic Church. Priest says "What are you doing here?" HB says "You can't have mass without me."

The next day, a Neutrino walked into the Catholic Church...  then walks out disappointed.  Why?

 

[Grainger49]

STRUMJ,

Is that video of the centrifuge dancing around the room on You-tube?

David, I'm going to guess a neutrino has no mass?  We didn't study neutrinos in the 50s and 60s (grade school and high school).

 

[earwaxxer]

The next day, a Neutrino walked into the Catholic Church...  then walks out disappointed.  Why?

When he saw what was supposed to be the 'transubstantiation' he yelled out "HEY, thats my move!"

 

[jrebman]

Sturmj,

We had a similar device at the plasma physics lab -- a 100,000k rotating device that held two thin plates with slightly offset nanoholes in it.  This one was in a vacuum too and was magnetically suspended.  The instrument was meant to allow one single electron to go through the nanoholes at a time into a detector to measure it's velocity.  This told somebody something important about what was going on inside that plasma, but I have no idea what.

-- Jim

 

[2wo]

"This told somebody something important about what was going on, but I have no idea what. "

I get that a lot in my line of work ;D...John

 

[STURMJ]

The dancing centrifuge discussion was way before you-tube, and slightly before widespread internet access.  I never looked (maybe I will now  ;D). The device was made by Beckman (now Beckman-Coulter). I would guess that these were internal tests to see how dangerous their product would be under failure conditions, thus it's unlikely they would be released publicly. Not that this thing was unsafe, I would rather dodge the whole machine than shrapnel generated by the titanium head (keep in mind that's in a 1/2 armor plate case.) 

 

[Grainger49]

Getting back to Higgs Boson, this means we have seen Warp 1.  I can hear Scotty saying, "Captain, the engines, I don't think they can take it any more!"