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My car broke down in Delta, Utah in Jan 2020. I was helped by beryllium miners who worked the mines in the area [1]. Beryllium does not expand or contract when

My car broke down in Delta, Utah in Jan 2020. I was helped by beryllium miners who worked the mines in the area [1]. Beryllium does not expand or contract when heated or cooled, making it ideal for the frame of the James Webb telescope. Coincidentally, I broke down inside a cosmic ray telescope array named with the same last name as mine: The Lon and Mary Watson Cosmic Ray Center [2] The people in that area are probably celebrating right now, just not with alcohol because they are mostly Mormon. If any of you are on Hacker News reading this, thank you! [1] https://www.upr.org/utah-news/2022-03-25/beryllium-is-a-critical-mineral-mined-in-utah https://www.upr.org/utah-news/2022-03-25/beryllium-is-a-crit... [2] https://www.space.com/36975-telescope-array-site-tour-photo-gallery.html https://www.space.com/36975-telescope-array-site-tour-photo-...

prpl 4y ago
Only a few (maybe 2) people who work on TA are from Delta. Some were there for night shifts for days to a week or two - most of it was to be automated. A few of the researchers were mormon, most are not. Most drank (even if at Curleys). It’s mostly different astrophysics but still - it’s astrophysics
- mwattsun 4y ago
  It would have been cool to meet some researchers and have a chat, but I spent a few days hanging out with the town folk who live in Delta. It's a nice town. I went for pizza in a bar bowling alley. They're not all Mormon and for all I know modern Mormons drink. I counted a Baptist and a Catholic church. The bar unironically had a poster from the 70's or 80's that no one felt the need to update: https://imgur.com/a/s6Y6O1J https://imgur.com/a/s6Y6O1J I was very lucky, because I had just driven on 70 in the Eastern part of Utah where there was no service for about 120 miles (remember that monolith? out there), and I was just about to head out into the Great Basin. In other words, I broke down a couple of miles from the only repair shop in hundreds of thousands of square miles.
  - prpl 4y ago
    yep, not a coincidence there - you have to run atmospheric fluorescence detectors in a dark, unpopulated desert, far from light pollution ideally
    - mwattsun 4y ago
      That's as far away as I've ever been from light, except Northern Alaska. The lack of human made noise of any kind was also disconcerting there

prpl 4y ago

Only a few (maybe 2) people who work on TA are from Delta. Some were there for night shifts for days to a week or two - most of it was to be automated. A few of the researchers were mormon, most are not. Most drank (even if at Curleys). It’s mostly different astrophysics but still - it’s astrophysics

mwattsun 4y ago
It would have been cool to meet some researchers and have a chat, but I spent a few days hanging out with the town folk who live in Delta. It's a nice town. I went for pizza in a bar bowling alley. They're not all Mormon and for all I know modern Mormons drink. I counted a Baptist and a Catholic church. The bar unironically had a poster from the 70's or 80's that no one felt the need to update: https://imgur.com/a/s6Y6O1J https://imgur.com/a/s6Y6O1J I was very lucky, because I had just driven on 70 in the Eastern part of Utah where there was no service for about 120 miles (remember that monolith? out there), and I was just about to head out into the Great Basin. In other words, I broke down a couple of miles from the only repair shop in hundreds of thousands of square miles.
- prpl 4y ago
  yep, not a coincidence there - you have to run atmospheric fluorescence detectors in a dark, unpopulated desert, far from light pollution ideally
  - mwattsun 4y ago
    That's as far away as I've ever been from light, except Northern Alaska. The lack of human made noise of any kind was also disconcerting there