Physics

A 31 minute SciShow video on how lead ingots which were recovered from a Roman shipwreck enabled the CUORE experiment's search for neutrinoless double beta decay, and the challenges of ethically sourcing "low background material".

Has anyone set aside lead (and other materials) as a stockpile of low background material for future generations of physicists? Seems like something The Long Now Foundation might do.

Crossposted from: https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12976393

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I learned this week that many high speed CD-ROM drives used balancing balls on the spindle to stop discs from vibrating at 10Krpm.

Between the platter that supports the CD and the motor there is a puck with a toroidal void containing a few ball bearings. When an out of balance CD is spun up the spindle and disc together rotate around their common center of mass, some point between the spindle and the edge of the disk. This means that the void containing the balls no longer rotates around it's center, it spins like a hula-hoop around the spindle/DC center of mass. With the "lighter" side of the system being farther from the center of rotation the balls roll 'down hill' towards the side of the void that is experiencing more centrifugal force. Eventually enough balls will collect on the light side to perfectly cancel out the heavy side. If there are too many balls they will distribute themselves inside the void until they cancel out each other's weight!

The link leads to a scaled up demo of this using an empty water bottle and steel BBs.

I must admit that the details of how the fields are coupled went over my head, but I found the rest of the video quite accessible. Professor Copeland is a joy to listen to, and Brady asks great questions as usual.

I also learned that "inflation" and "the big bang" are not synonymous, and inflation occurred first.

I think I need to rephrase the question. I'll post again in a few days.

The replies so far have generally been very polite, given the subject. I was nervous about that. Thanks everyone!

... Hear me out, okay?

Back in 2000 I took my first solo, out of state trip, to meet an online friend. When I got off the bus, she greeted me, and let me know that we had to go stop by her friends house on the way back.

She was Wiccan and needed some Spiritual guidance because the night before she saw a black portal open up in the corner of her room that was giving her really bad vibes.

It wasn't my thing, but I never discounted it. Maybe it was real, and if nothing else it's just how her mind is rationalizing things.

But I guess my question is: Does the Scientific Method rule out the possibility that a "real" portal appeared in her room?

Taking wave function probability into account and the absense of data from the room, is it fair to say that the scientific method doesn't rule out the black portal being real?

Looking for black and white answers if possible, but I'd also love to hear your reasoning~

The two hemispheres are electrically connected to each other and to an AC power supply, the ring is connected to the same AC supply but 180 degrees out of phase. Particles are charged and then injected into the trap, they are then alternately attracted to the ring and hemispheres causing them to oscillate and become trapped! As the voltage is increased lighter particles pick up more speed until they are finally thrown free from the trap. In ideal conditions ions are all charged the same amount allowing the trap to sort the ions from lightest to heaviest, allowing you to determine the atoms that make up a particular substance.

In this model I can not control the charge on the particles but it is possible to roughly sort them from smallest to largest.

Notes: This trap is scaled WAY up, the ring had a diameter of about 24mm. I'm trapping non-dairy creamer not individual ions. The frequency this trap runs at is WAY lower frequency than that of a real ion trap. This trap runs at a much higher voltage than a real trap. Otherwise them mechanism of operation is identical to the real thing.

So, I watched The Higgs Field, explained - Don Lincoln and there it explains that particles are massless and it is only through their interaction with the Higg's field that they gain mass. However, how are they "moving" through the Higg's field? Is it through a movement in the 3rd dimension or a dimension above?

And related, does the movement through the Higg's field generate gravitons that affect particles they interact with by "pulling" them in the opposite direction of which they were traveling?

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