81–90 of 153 posts
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Ok now I’m curious what beer is served at CERN. I am not familiar with any Swiss beer and only a handful of unspectacular French beers.
I don’t know about the beer at CERN specifically but the beer culture of Geneva generally is subpar.
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I have a bunch of stuff in my house that I know there are people who would be happy to have it and maybe pay a few dollars but I live in a fairly small town and I'm certainly not about to go to the trouble of boxing things up and shipping them. I can get rid of some things by just leaving them at the end of the driveway with a free sign but doesn't work for everything.
ebay is your friend. People buy entire boxes of unknown old electronic equipment junk that may or may not be working. "As is." You don't even have to really list the contents, just a big picture of everything. I think a lot are scrapping the gold and components, something I got into for awhile. I got almost 4 oz of solid gold from crushed cpu's, memory, old IC's, cable connectors, etc., using nitric acid, a hammer an…
Back in 2015 when I still thought I'd be a physicist, I was a summer intern at Fermilab on the MicroBooNE experiment. The sense of excitement and teamwork on the 10th floor was something I dearly missed when I went to CERN the year after. Every day at 3pm was "coffee and cookies", and my colleagues and I would join the line filled with physicists of all ages and from across the lab, to grab a cookie or maybe two. On…
Perks of a stand-alone national lab I guess! My workplace (Savannah River Site) has a strict no-booze policy. Although people frequently bring donuts!
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I have a bunch of stuff in my house that I know there are people who would be happy to have it and maybe pay a few dollars but I live in a fairly small town and I'm certainly not about to go to the trouble of boxing things up and shipping them. I can get rid of some things by just leaving them at the end of the driveway with a free sign but doesn't work for everything.
ebay is your friend. People buy entire boxes of unknown old electronic equipment junk that may or may not be working. "As is." You don't even have to really list the contents, just a big picture of everything. I think a lot are scrapping the gold and components, something I got into for awhile. I got almost 4 oz of solid gold from crushed cpu's, memory, old IC's, cable connectors, etc., using nitric acid, a hammer an…
> However, Fermilab may not deserve all the blame, says a theoretical physicist who requested anonymity to protect relations with DOE. For example, he says, after the lab finally hammered out an excavation contract with Thyssen Mining, months passed before DOE approved it. “I’m not sure whether it’s really the lab that has a problem, or if it’s DOE that has a problem and is blaming the lab.” If you need anonymity to…
> If you need anonymity to talk to a reporter, you already know that DOE has a problem. I know nothing of the issues going on but this just isn't a universal truth. Most people would speak anonymously when talking about their employer and that doesn't mean there is anything wrong with their employer. Which employers allow their employees to speak poorly of them in public without permission to speak about the company?
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ebay is your friend. People buy entire boxes of unknown old electronic equipment junk that may or may not be working. "As is." You don't even have to really list the contents, just a big picture of everything. I think a lot are scrapping the gold and components, something I got into for awhile. I got almost 4 oz of solid gold from crushed cpu's, memory, old IC's, cable connectors, etc., using nitric acid, a hammer an…
Any videos on how to recover gold from crushed CPUs, ICs, etc?
Edit: here you go: https://youtu.be/ASQCa7mfjVo
He does it with PCBs in one and ram connectors in another, but mentions the process is essentially the same for everything else including CPUs. I'm not sure what the economics of the acids he uses versus nitric are, though.
Fermilab has been in trouble for a while. They did not diversify enough at the tail end of Tevatron and (I think) are mostly working on DUNE, which isn’t going great. You can’t have a lab that big with mostly a singular focus which is being executed poorly.
The real problem is that theoretical particle physics had hit a local optimum that they can't break out of. String theory hasn't panned out, quantum gravity hasn't panned out, and no one really knows where to go next.
This is a complete misunderstanding of the state of physics. The problem is not theoretical physics, if anything, the problem lies in our technological/engineering prowess that has not been able to follow our advances in physics. The Standard Model has some issues but it's, in principle, a valid effective description of all the fundamental forces minus gravity. The issue is that quantum effects of gravity are negligi…
Yes. Theoretical particle physics has done a wonderfully good job in explaining everything it can. But now the job is done. Should move on and do something else. But because the institutions are too established, and past glory is too good, they don't know how.
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> The problem is not theoretical physics, if anything, the problem lies in our technological/engineering prowess that has not been able to follow our advances in physics. That used to be my view, but it turns I was wrong. The standard model was complete in the 1970's, and everything beyond it since then has been fruitless. Axions excluded, the other kind of axion excluded, sterile neutrinos excluded to make just a fe…
Roger Penrose is a remarkable mathematician and has made profound contributions to mathematics and its application to General Relativity. But his opinions on Quantum Mechanics, (e.g., its relationship with conscience) are very fringe, when not outright quack-material. Nobody takes him seriously on this topic and he has made no recognizable contribution or proved anything that would grant any credibility to the idea.…
You can't just take any and every topic of research and apply this quote to it. There are always more potential research topics than there is research funding. You need to prioritize somehow.
> when you are researching the frontiers of science
There are many other frontiers of science, than just theoretical particle physics. Maybe some other topics would deserve a bit more resources now?
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Roger Penrose is a remarkable mathematician and has made profound contributions to mathematics and its application to General Relativity. But his opinions on Quantum Mechanics, (e.g., its relationship with conscience) are very fringe, when not outright quack-material. Nobody takes him seriously on this topic and he has made no recognizable contribution or proved anything that would grant any credibility to the idea.…
This implies, I believe, that further progress refining physics will result in similar great societal advances. This can only be based on belief. Maybe. And perhaps a spectacular future awaits us, due to some present-day discovery that now seems insignificant. Yes, one can point to many such instances in the past; but what gives us confidence this will continue into the future?